Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine and its project partners earned three Society for Protective Coatings (SSPC) Structure Awards, which recognize top coatings projects from the past year.

The company won the Charles G. Munger Award, Eric S. Kline Award and the Military Coatings Project Award of Excellence.

The awards recognize a variety of coatings achievements, including delivering long-term service life for a colorful New Mexico water tower, enabling efficient shop applications on steel for a major New York bridge project, and evaluating a copper-free antifoulant technology on a fast transport military vessel.

The SSPC Structure Awards are given annually to projects in seven categories representing an array of structures and service conditions.

They honor individuals and companies who have represented the coatings industry in a positive light.

The winning projects were recognized on Feb. 3, 2020, during the annual Awards Luncheon at the SSPC Coatings+ Conference in Long Beach, Calif.

“The SSPC Structure Awards represent the best applications of advanced coatings technologies that prolong the service life and beauty of impressive structures around the world. That’s exactly what Sherwin-Williams and our project partners strive to do every day in our work,” said W. Doni Riddle, senior VP of sales, Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine. “Sherwin-Williams has been recognized multiple years in a row, which demonstrates our commitment to enhancing asset protection, enabling efficiencies and advancing coatings science. These qualities are demonstrated in each of this year’s award-winning projects, and they wouldn’t have been possible without the fine work of the asset owners, specifiers, engineers and applicators in leveraging high-performance coatings to obtain excellent results.”

Charles G. Munger Award – Mesa Del Sol 2-Million-Gallon Composite Elevated Tank
The Charles G. Munger Award recognizes outstanding achievements in an industrial or commercial coatings project demonstrating the longevity of the original coating.

Such long-term durability is apparent on both the inside and outside of the winning project – a 2-million-gallon composite elevated water storage tank serving the Mesa Del Sol master-planned community in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The 175-foot tall tank features a variety of interior and exterior coatings from Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine that offer outstanding long-term corrosion resistance.

Steel plates that make up the tank were first primed in a shop in June 2007 using Zinc Clad PCP Ultra as a sacrificial pre-construction primer. After the tank was constructed in July 2008, applicators sprayed a field primer coat of Corothane I Galvapac Zinc Primer followed by an intermediate coat of Acrolon 218 HS.

For the topcoat, which features a colorful white oak leaf design, the project team used FluoroKem HS, an ultra-durable high-solids fluoropolymer urethane finish that delivers outstanding long-term color and gloss retention.

For supplemental protection, applicators added a coat of clear FluoroKem over the design.

The coating system has helped the artwork retain color and gloss over the past 12 years in the extremely high ultraviolet exposure conditions of New Mexico, in which typical polyurethane finishes begin to fade within a few years.

The inside of the tank features a durable three-coat lining system using Corothane I Galvapac Zinc Primer and two coats of Macropoxy 646 PW. The lining is still in excellent condition.

Additional members of the winning project team included the tank’s owner Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, as well as design-build contractor Landmark Structures of Fort Worth, Texas, and Albuquerque-based engineering consulting firm Bohannon Huston, Inc.



Eric S. Kline Award – Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge (Tappan Zee Bridge)
The project team responsible for specifying, supplying and applying coatings for the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge (also known as the Tappan Zee Bridge) in Tarrytown, NY, won the 2020 Eric S. Kline Award.

The award recognizes outstanding achievement in industrial coatings work performed in a fixed shop facility. Assets coated in a shop environment using high-performance coatings from Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine included numerous steel girders, which ranged in typical sizes between 12 and 14 feet wide by 90 to 120 feet in length.

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge is a new twin cable-stayed bridge spanning the Hudson River between Tarrytown and Nyack, NY.

It was completed in 2018, replacing the original Tappan Zee Bridge. The new bridge spans 16,368 feet – more than 3 miles – requiring massive amounts of steel for its construction.

That steel is being protected from corrosion by a three-coat system featuring the organic zinc-rich epoxy primer Zinc Clad III HS, an intermediate coat of Macropoxy 646 and a topcoat of Acrolon 218 HS.

Each coat was applied between 3 and 5 mils dry film thickness (DFT), except on the exteriors of the fascia girders and in designated high-corrosion areas where Macropoxy 646 was increased to 6-10 mils DFT for added durability.

Applying the steel girder coatings in the shop provided efficiency, quality and safety benefits. The selection of an organic zinc primer over inorganic zinc improved dry and recoat times, reduced stripe coat times and accelerated inspections.

The choice of Macropoxy 646 enabled wet-on-wet applications following stripe coating to enhance efficiencies, as well as the ability to apply higher DFTs in a single coat. Coating the steel in the shop, rather than after it was erected, enabled more uniform applications and thorough inspections. In addition, because most coatings were applied offsite, minimal onsite application was needed, except for touching up connection points and any potential coatings damage incurred during construction.
The project was completed for the NY State Thruway Authority by Oklahoma City, Ok.-based W&W/AFCO Steel LLC and Claremont, New Hampshire-based CanAm Bridges. HDR Inc., Omaha, Nebraska, served as design manager.


Military Coatings Project Award of Excellence – USNS Millinocket (T-EPF-3)
For the second year in a row – and third time since 2014 – Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine earned a top distinction for its contribution to protecting military vessels from corrosion with the 2020 Military Coatings Project Award of Excellence.

This year’s award recognizes the exceptional coatings work performed on the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC) vessel USNS Millinocket (T-EPF-3), including the evaluation of a copper-free antifoulant technology.

In 2015, MSC selected Sherwin-Williams SeaVoyage Copper-Free Antifouling Paint for evaluation to ensure the coating would deliver the expected durability and service life on the Spearhead-class high-speed expeditionary fast transport vessel.

This aluminum twin-hull catamaran is an ideal vessel to use SeaVoyage Copper-Free, as the coating’s copper-free nature prevents negative galvanic series interactions that may occur between an aluminum hull and traditional copper-based antifoulant coatings. The copper-free coating protects against both soft and hard fouling using a combination of biocides that are non-persistent in the environment. The biocides simply degrade into non-toxic components in 24 hours in seawater, preventing heavy metal accumulation in ports and harbors.

When the USNS Millinocket underwent drydock maintenance in early 2019, SeaVoyage Copper-Free met MSC’s expectations, confirming the coating’s suitability and long-term performance for other vessels of this class.

The 2019 drydocking also included underwater hull preservation maintenance. Applicators applied SeaGuard 5000HS Epoxy to the vessel’s underwater hull, strainers, waterjet tunnels, engine exhausts and ride control fins, as well as Nova-Plate UHS Epoxy coating to the high-wear waterjet tunnels for added durability. The final step included a fresh application of SeaVoyage Copper-Free to the vessel’s entire submerged and splash zone areas.

The global project team included MSC; Vigor, a shipbuilding and repair company from Portland, Oregon; and the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock located in West Bethesda, Maryland, as the consulting engineer. Singapore-based EuroNavy Coatings (S) Pte Ltd. provided technical support during drydocking maintenance performed at the Sembawang Shipyard in Singapore.

Sherwin-Williams and associated partner companies previously won the Military Coatings Project Award of Excellence for their work on the U.S. Navy’s USS George Washington (CVN-73) supercarrier in 2019 and the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) supercarrier in 2014.