- Best of Market -- Infrastructure - International Composite Expo, Nashville, TN - January 1997
- Counterpoise Grand Design Award - International Composite Expo, Nashville, TN - January 1997
- R&D 100 - Chicago, IL - September 1997
This competition was held in two phases. In the first phase, the seventy five entries were entered into one of fifteen categories such as aircraft, automotive, construction, energy, infrastructure, marine, medical, and eight other areas. The KSCI bridge was entered into the infrastructure category.
The Best of Market category award is provided by AMOCO Chemicals Company to the Society of the Plastics Industry annual Product Showcase. Meritorious products exemplifying innovation, excellent manufacturing techniques, and market impact are awarded a Certificate of Merit and invited to be displayed in the central space of each year's Expo.
Best of Market Award -- 1997; International Composites Expo
For each market area represented by the Certificate of Merit winners, a panel of industry executives and journalists select one product as Best of Market. Since 1985, the category winners have been recognized with special plaques sponsored by AMOCO Chemicals. In 1995, the infrastructure category for civil engineering applications was established as a separate category in recognition of the rapidly growing importance of composites in this field.
KSCI won the 1997 Best of Market award for infrastructure.
Counterposie Grand Design Award -- 1997; International Composites Expo
After the fifteen category awards are presented, a secret ballot is used to select the overall grand award winner from among the list of Best of Market winners. The winning company is then awarded the Counterpoise Grand Design Award.
The Counterpoise Grand Design Award is a twenty-two inch high Steuben glass sculpture donated each year since 1959 by the Owens Corning Company. This award is considered the most prestigious prize in the plastics/composites world and has been won seven times by General Motors in addition to being won by Ford, Chrysler, Beech Aircraft, Westinghouse, Grumman Aerospace, and Hardcore-DuPont.
KSCI won the Counterpoise Grand Design Award for 1997 for the Rapid Installation FRP Bridge. It is the smallest firm ever to win this award for a new product.
At the 35th Awards Banquet held at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, Research and Development Magazine recognized Kansas Structural Composite's "Rapid Installation FRP Highway Bridge" as one of its winners. Each year they give awards for what they consider to be the year's most technologically significant products and processes. The R&D 100 Awards has become recognized as the premier program for acknowledging marketable products of technological significance. 1997 winners included Los Alamos Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lockheed Martin Energy Systems Inc, Kinetrix Inc/Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Honeywell, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Northrop Grumman, Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories, PPG Industries Inc, and many others. Past product winners have included the automated teller machine, the halogen lamp, the fax machine, taxol anti-cancer drug, and many more products that have become common in our environment. More details can be found in the September 1997 (Vol 39 No. 10) issue of R&D magazine. We were also featured on the September 26, 1997 spot shown on CNN.
We invite you to visit our home town of Russell, Kansas.