Preliminary analysis prepared independently by House Strategies Group LLC from public data. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Fairfax County. Figures illustrate analytical approach and are subject to revision with primary data. Not a procurement-disparity finding.

Module 5 · Methodology & legal framework

How it was built, and where the line is

This page is the honesty layer. It explains the index in plain language, names every source, states the limits of public data, and sets out the constitutional standard a defensible disparity study must meet.

The disparity index in plain language

The disparity index divides utilization by availability. Availability is a group's share of the firms in the market. Utilization is that group's share of the dollars spent. If a group is 30% of firms and wins 30% of dollars, the index is 1.0, parity.

An index of 0.50 means a group wins half the work its presence in the market would predict. Across disparity studies, an index below 0.80 is treated as substantial underutilization, the same threshold used here.

Index = Utilization % ÷ Availability %
Utilization is a share of dollars (FY23 SWaM report). Availability is a share of firms (Census ABS). Comparing the two is the conventional construction.

Industry-cluster crosswalk

Procurement-relevant clusters are built from 2-digit NAICS sectors so availability and the spend picture line up.

ConstructionNAICS 23
Professional & Technical ServicesNAICS 54
Information TechnologyNAICS 51
Goods & CommoditiesNAICS 31-33, 42, 44-45
Other ServicesNAICS 56, 81, 48-49

Provenance

Every figure traces to a public source

These are the datasets behind the portal, each retrieved and cached to static JSON at build time. No government endpoint is called at runtime.

U.S. Census Annual Business Survey (ABS), Company Summary 2022

2026-06-16

Employer-firm counts by owner sex, ethnicity, race, and veteran status, cross-tabbed by 2022 NAICS sector and geography. Reference year 2022, released Dec 2024.

www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/abs/data/2022/AB220

U.S. Census Annual Business Survey (ABS), Company Summary 2017

2026-06-16

Employer-firm counts by owner demographics for the 2017→2022 trend baseline.

www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/abs/data/2017/ABSCS

Fairfax County FY23 SWaM Report

2026-06-16

County + FCPS purchase-order spend by supplier size and ownership; the County's own published utilization figures. Excludes P-card and non-PO spend (incl. capital construction). DPMM, updated Dec 2023.

www.fairfaxcounty.gov/procurement/sites/procurement/

Virginia eVA Procurement Data 2024

2026-06-16

Statewide purchase-order line items with NIGP category, line total, and self-reported SWaM flags. Used for industry-cluster spend distribution. Fairfax routes most spend outside eVA, so eVA is a Commonwealth-level signal, not a Fairfax utilization source.

data.virginia.gov/dataset/eva-procurement-data-2024

Fairfax County RFP 2000004217, Procurement Disparity Study

2026-06-16

Solicitation framing the relevant geographic market area, legal standard, and deliverables this preliminary analysis anticipates.

www.fairfaxcounty.gov/procurement/

U.S. Census cartographic county boundaries (us-atlas / TIGER)

2026-06-16

County polygons for the RGMA choropleth, trimmed to WAA component jurisdictions.

cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/us-atlas@3/counties-10m.json

Governing legal framework

What a constitutionally defensible study must satisfy

City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co.
488 U.S. 469 (1989)

Race-conscious public contracting measures face strict scrutiny. A jurisdiction must show a strong basis in evidence of identified discrimination in its own market, typically a disparity study, and must narrowly tailor any remedy. A statistical gap is the starting point, not the conclusion.

H.B. Rowe Co. v. Tippett
615 F.3d 233 (4th Cir. 2010)

The Fourth Circuit, which governs Virginia, upheld race-conscious measures only for groups where the evidence showed statistically significant disparities, and struck them down where it did not. Findings must be group-specific and evidence-led.

A preliminary index from public data cannot meet this bar. It can show where to look. A defensible study pairs availability and utilization with statistical significance testing, anecdotal evidence, and narrowly tailored, group-specific recommendations.

What this preliminary analysis cannot do
  • It uses an equal-weight public firm count, not a capacity- and willingness-adjusted availability survey.
  • Utilization is the County's PO summary, which excludes P-card, non-PO, and capital-construction spend, and is not broken out by contract or category.
  • It sees prime-level spend only. Subcontractor participation is invisible to public data.
  • It has no bid or lost-contract data, so it cannot separate a supply gap from a selection gap.
  • It applies no statistical significance test and carries no anecdotal record.
  • The group-by-cluster matrix assumes uniform utilization across clusters, which a full study removes.
What public data does establish
A credible, transparent first read of the landscape: the size and composition of the supplier base, the County's own reported spend by ownership, a defensible market area, and a directional index that points to where disparities are most likely to be found and tested.

The honest upgrade path

What the full study adds that public data cannot

This is both the limit of this portal and the work House Strategies Group would contribute to a study team.

PhD-led custom availability survey
A weighted survey of firms that are ready, willing, and able to perform Fairfax work, replacing the equal-weight public firm count with a capacity- and willingness-adjusted denominator.
Five fiscal years of transaction data
Contract- and payment-level records for County and FCPS, not the public PO summary, so utilization can be measured by category, method, and dollar.
Subcontractor utilization
Lower-tier participation, which prime-level public data cannot see and which is often where disparities concentrate.
Bid and offer (lost-contract) data
The firms that competed and did not win, which separates a supply problem from a selection problem.
Qualitative corroboration
Owner interviews, public hearings, and trade-association input that give the statistics their anecdotal record.
Defensibility legal opinion
A narrowly tailored set of findings and remedies reviewed against the current constitutional standard.
See how peer studies executed this