Anchorage firm gets $29.9 million to fix prison freezers in the Mid-Atlantic

Anchorage-based TSS-PCS LLC will install and repair freezer and cooler units at 13 Bureau of Prisons institutions in the Mid-Atlantic region under a $29.9 million federal contract. The money carries an Alaska address, but the work doesn't happen here. The USAspending.gov award record lists the company, owned by an Alaska Native corporation, in Anchorage and shows the bureau awarded it Sept. 30 without competition or a set-aside. Its place-of-performance field says Anchorage, but its description puts the work in the bureau's Mid-Atlantic region, which includes prisons in Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina. It doesn't name the 13 sites. The contract runs Oct. 1 through Nov. 4, 2027.

That gap came up at a May 21 Commonwealth North forum in Anchorage on the federal 8(a) contracting program, though this contract wasn't an 8(a) award. Panelist Kevin Berry said Alaskans might ask why it matters when the work and workers are in the Lower 48. "So to the extent that these ventures, these contracts are profitable, that's where we see money come into the Alaska economy, into these headquarters of the different corporations," he said. He was not speaking about this contract.

Other Anchorage firms hold Bureau of Prisons contracts too. MTNT Facility Solutions has an $832,070 contract to repair roofing at FCI Ashland. Bering Straits Professional Services starts a $7.1 million contract Oct. 6 to replace the main electrical panel at FCC Florence in Colorado.

A September Justice Department inspector general audit found that as of August 2025, the bureau had 486 refrigeration units rated obsolete or inoperable, about $37 million to replace, and 674 more rated poor. The bureau says it has committed funding to replace all of them. The day it signed the TSS-PCS contract, it also signed 8(a) sole-source freezer and cooler contracts with Four Tribes Civil Construction LLC of Reno, Nevada: $30.5 million for its Western region and $27.2 million for its South-Central region.