Conti Federal Awarded $37.7 Million Army Deal for Ellsworth Alert Facility
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded the Orlando firm a firm-fixed-price contract to construct an alert facility in South Dakota, with work due by November 2028.
ORLANDO, FLORIDA — Conti Federal Services LLC, an Orlando-based military construction contractor, received a $37.7 million Army contract to build an alert facility at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, as announced on war.gov.
The firm-fixed-price contract carries a total cumulative face value of $39.9 million and covers design-bid-build construction, according to war.gov. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office in Omaha, Nebraska, obligated the full $37.7 million from fiscal 2026 military construction funds at the time of the award. The Corps solicited bids over the internet and received three offers before selecting Conti Federal, according to war.gov. Work will proceed in Ellsworth, South Dakota, with an estimated completion date of Nov. 6, 2028.
Alert facilities house aircrews and support personnel on standby, allowing bombers or other aircraft to launch on short notice. Ellsworth Air Force Base sits near Rapid City in western South Dakota and serves as one of the Air Force’s B-1B Lancer bomber installations. Ellsworth will become a main operating base for the B-21 Raider, the next-generation stealth bomber, tying new construction there to a broader modernization push. The award concentrates federal dollars in a rural region where military spending anchors the local economy, and construction contracts of this size ripple through Rapid City through jobs, subcontracts, and material purchases.
Military construction at Ellsworth reflects a long federal presence in the Black Hills region, as has happened before. The base opened in 1942 as Rapid City Army Air Base and took its current name in 1953 for Brig. Gen. Richard E. Ellsworth, who died that year in a bomber crash. It later housed Minuteman missile silos during the Cold War before shifting to its bomber role, drawing repeated waves of construction that reshaped the surrounding communities and cemented the installation as an economic backbone of western South Dakota.