Rotondo Weirich Supplies Modular Cells for FCI Aliceville

ALICEVILLE, Ala. — Rotondo Weirich, a manufacturer of precast modular prison cells, will supply more than 800 prefinished modular cells for the new $200 million Federal Correctional Institution-Aliceville.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons awarded the $184 million design-build contract for 650,000-square-foot women’s prison the joint venture general contracting team of Montgomery-based Caddell Construction and Mobile-based W.G. Yates and Sons Construction. The facility will incorporate 1,152 medium-security beds with an adjacent 256-bed minimum-security work camp.

Rotondo Weirich, headquartered in Lederach, Pa., will transport the entire production and finishing process to the project site to supply 816 precast cells for general and special housing units.

The company’s mobile fabrication shop consists of two 40-foot transport containers with an enjoining custom roof to enclose and protect the production space and equipment.

GRW Inc., a full-service engineering, architecture and planning firm headquartered in Lexington, Ky., is the lead architect-engineer on the project, which is scheduled for completion in 2011.

FCI Aliceville will be the third federal facility to be sited in Alabama. The medium-security Federal Correctional Institution, in Talladega, and the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp, located at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, house only male inmates.

Females convicted of federal crimes in Alabama are transferred out of state to minimum-security FCI Tallahassee and medium-security FCI Marianna in Florida.

Alabama Department of Corrections operates one state prison for female inmates — Tutwiler Prison for Women, near Wetumpka, which includes condemned inmate housing.

The Tutwiler facility is more than 60 years old and is beset with infrastructure and mechanical, engineering and plumbing systems problems, officials say.

The facility has a rated capacity of 956 beds and the state is forced to house more than 50 percent of its female inmate population — 2,160 as of September 2008 — in other states and private prisons.