Each year at the Annual Member Summit, American Polyurea recognizes the industry’s outstanding contributors through the Polyurea Excellence Awards. These awards celebrate innovation, craftsmanship, community leadership, and the advancement of polyurea technology across all application sectors.
2025 Award Winners
🏆 Project Excellence Award — Infrastructure
Winner: Marcus Webb, Southwest Industrial Coatings (Phoenix, AZ)
Project: 80,000 sq ft secondary containment system for a major fuel distribution facility in the Phoenix metro area. The project was completed 12 days ahead of schedule, required zero rework, and passed all EPA secondary containment integrity tests on first inspection. Marcus’s team applied 1.4 million square feet of polyurea across the primary containment berm, all floor transition areas, and secondary berms — creating one of the largest seamless polyurea secondary containment systems in the Southwest.
🏆 Innovation Award
Winner: Dr. Reena Patel, Applied Polymer Technologies Research (Houston, TX)
Achievement: Development of a low-exotherm hybrid polyurea formulation specifically engineered for thick-film safe room applications. The formulation allows single-pass application at 200+ mils without the surface temperature spike that causes blistering in conventional systems, dramatically reducing safe room coating installation time while improving finish quality. The formulation was licensed to two commercial manufacturers in 2025 and is already in use on projects across eight states.
🏆 Community Leadership Award
Winner: Rodrigo Castillo, Lone Star Polyurea (San Antonio, TX)
Achievement: Rodrigo personally mentored 11 new polyurea applicators through informal one-on-one coaching in 2025, contributed 88 forum posts answering technical questions, co-chaired the South Central Chapter’s recruitment initiative that brought in 31 new members, and organized the Houston pipeline coating symposium in partnership with AMPP. His consistent investment in other members’ success exemplifies the community values that American Polyurea was founded on.
🏆 New Applicator of the Year
Winner: DeShawn Carter, Carter Protective Coatings (Nashville, TN)
Achievement: DeShawn launched Carter Protective Coatings in January 2025 and completed 47 projects in his first year — an extraordinary result for a first-year operation. His focus on residential safe rooms and storm shelters in Middle Tennessee found a market gap that existing contractors had underserved. DeShawn joined the American Polyurea community before his business launched, crediting the network with helping him source equipment, find his first industrial client, and avoid costly mistakes during setup.
🏆 Sustainability Leadership Award
Winner: Pacific Polyurea Solutions (Portland, OR)
Achievement: Tyler Nguyen’s team completed 22 municipal wastewater projects in 2025 using zero-VOC formulations that comply with California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations — voluntarily applying CARB standards to all Pacific Northwest projects even where not legally required. The company also implemented a solvent-free equipment cleaning protocol and a material waste tracking system that reduced waste disposal costs by 34% year-over-year while improving their environmental compliance documentation.
Past Award Winners
| Year | Category | Winner | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Project Excellence | Gulf Coast Pipeline Services | LA |
| 2024 | Innovation Award | PolyTech Formulations | TX |
| 2024 | Community Leadership | Great Plains Coatings | KS |
| 2023 | Project Excellence | Atlantic Infrastructure Group | VA |
| 2023 | Sustainability Leadership | EcoCoat Pacific | WA |
| 2023 | New Applicator of the Year | Bayou Protective Coatings | LA |
| 2022 | Project Excellence | Rocky Mountain Polyurea | CO |
| 2022 | Innovation Award | Midwest Polymer Research | OH |
Nominate Someone for 2026
Nominations for the 2026 Polyurea Excellence Awards open July 1, 2026 and close July 25, 2026. Any American Polyurea member in good standing may nominate any other member, a colleague, or themselves. Awards are presented at the Annual Member Summit in August 2026 in Dallas, TX.
To submit a nomination, use the Contact Us page with the subject line “2026 Award Nomination.” Include the nominee’s name, company, category, and a 200–400 word description of their achievement. Read about past winners and community members in our Community section.
