Alaska Native Corporation 8(a) graduates: competing successfully in open markets nationwide.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: ALASKA NATIVE CORPORATION

The US Small Business Administration exists to assist small business growth and development through loan guarantees, contracts, counseling sessions, and other initiatives. One of those is the 8(a) Business Development Program, which helps "small, disadvantaged businesses compete in the marketplace," in large part through sole-source contracts.

According to the US Small Business Administration, the overall goal of the 8(a) Business Development Program "is to graduate 8(a) firms that will go on to thrive in a competitive business environment." The 8(a) program is divided into two stages: a four year-developmental stage and a five-year transition stage, after which a company "graduates" with the expectation that it can compete in an open market for private and government contracts.

Many of the state's Alaska Native owned companies have participated and graduated from the 8(a) program and are meeting the program's goal with flying colors.

Eklutna

Eklutna, Inc. CEO Curtis J. McQueen says, "The 8(a) program has been huge and instrumental for a lot of corporations in the early days." He explains that Eklutna was in a unique position compared to many of the other Alaska Native corporations: "We had opportunities on our own land and to build in Anchorage ... opportunities that were not related to sole-source government contracting." Eklutna has only one subsidiary that is an 8(a) program graduate, Eklutna Services LLC (ESL), which graduated in July 2015.

"We're very proud of the fact that almost 80 to 90 percent of the work that ESL did while it was under the 8(a) program was not sole-source contracts," McQueen says. "It was a small business and it was minority-owned, and to have a procurement avenue like the 8(a) was wonderful ... but we stayed pretty busy on public projects and some of our own projects."

ESL is a general contractor and has performed a variety of projects around Alaska, ranging from residential developments to industrial shop spaces to renovating the JBER Emergency Operations Center. In 2012 ESL finished the last two phases of the Powder Ridge project, a residential development in Eagle River comprised of approximately four hundred single-family homes. The company is currently working on Powder View, a residential project in Eagle River that includes fifteen acres purchased by the Anchorage School District for a new Elementary school as development progresses.

"They've become Eklutna's main contractor, so if we want to build something ourselves, we have that option," McQueen says. To date all of ESL's projects have been in Alaska, "and that's the other thing...