The Real Awards & Competitions in Spray Foam

The SPFA National Industry Excellence Awards

The Spray Polyurethane Foam Alliance (SPFA) — a real trade association of contractors, manufacturers, and distributors founded in the late 1980s — runs an annual industry excellence awards program recognizing standout completed projects across insulation, roofing, and coatings applications. Winners are selected from submitted project entries, judged by industry peers on technical execution and application quality.

This is a real, ongoing program that has run for well over a decade. It is not something Spray Foam Competition administers or judges — we cover it as trade journalism, the same way a trade publication would.

The Top Gun Spray Competition

The Top Gun competition is a live application contest held at the annual SprayFoam Convention & Expo, the largest yearly gathering of spray foam professionals in the country. Unlike the SPFA excellence awards (which judge finished projects), Top Gun judges applicators in real time, spraying in front of industry peers and judges on the convention floor.

It's a genuinely public, in-person event — not a closed-door or online-only competition — which is part of why it carries real credibility within the trade.

Regional Competitions

Beyond the two national-level events above, regional spray-off competitions and championships happen at the state and local level, organized by regional trade groups, distributors, or manufacturer networks. These tend to have smaller footprints but follow similar judging logic — real-time application quality assessed by industry peers.

Why This Matters If You're Hiring

None of these competitions certify a company for life, and a past win doesn't guarantee the crew showing up at your house today applies the same standard. But understanding that these are real, judged events — with real, checkable criteria — gives you a much better framework for evaluating a contractor's claims than just taking “award-winning” at face value.