Edward K. Rice, founder and Honorary Chairman of CTS Cement Manufacturing Co, passed away May 9th in his Los Angeles home.
Ed’s illustrious civil engineering career spanned six decades. He started his academic work at UC Berkeley in 1943. During WWII, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and flew as navigator on a B-24. After the war, he returned to Berkeley, where he graduated in 1951 with a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering. He was a lecturer in the UCLA School of Engineering under Dean Boelter (’51 – ’54) and served as an Adjunct Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department (’86-’90). In 1957, he co-founded T.Y. Lin and Associates, an engineering consulting firm specializing in pre-stressed concrete. He invented and patented the first anchorage ever used in post-tensioning work with 7-wire strand. It revolutionized the use of unbonded post-tensioned concrete construction throughout the world.
Ed was a visionary leader and an innovator in the field of cement and concrete. He recognized that improving concrete structures required progress in cement chemistry. In 1975, he founded CTS Cement Manufacturing Corporation (CTS). The company focused on shrinkage-compensating and rapid-setting concretes based on calcium sulfoaluminate. Rapid Set cement was used in the rebuilding of the Santa Monica Freeway bridges after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. It has been used in the fast track rehabilitation of more than 1,000 miles of concrete highway pavement in California alone. He sold the company to his employees in 2010 and became Chairman Emeritus.
Ed held 26 patents in cement, concrete and building technology, among them his widely used system for stacking table-like modules to build de-mountable, efficient parking structures, shrinkage compensating cements, rapid hardening cements, quality control during the production of calcium sulfoaluminate cements, and new cements. In the 1960s, Ed tackled another urban problem when he created a system for rehabilitating New York City tenement housing. With his system, tenants would have to vacate a five-story building for only 48 hours for renovations to be completed. This and other contributions to solving problems of urban construction earned him appointment to the Presidential Commission on Low Income Housing. His interest in urban development also put him at the forefront of major development projects, including the Los Angeles World Trade Center and Sacramento’s Downtown Plaza.
Ed was a strong supporter of academia; UC Berkeley, the University of Oklahoma and UCLA in particular. In 1987, he was named Distinguished Engineering Alumnus at UC Berkeley. He received the UCLA Engineering Service Award in 2002 for 50 years of service to UCLA, and the UCLA Lifetime Contribution Award in 2013. The Linda and Edward K. Rice Chair was endowed at the UCLA School of Engineering, as well as the Bescher Fellowship in Materials Science. Linda and Ed support many undergraduate, graduate and faculty fellowships.
Ed’s innovative work on cement and concrete led him to receive many industry awards. In 2013, he received an Honorary Membership in the ASTM C01 Committee on Cement. He was a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a Fellow and Honorary Member of the American Concrete Institute. He was elected as an inaugural member of the Hall of Fame of the Post-Tensioning Institute (Legends of Post-Tensioning) in 2005.
Above all perhaps, Ed was a devoted family man. He cherished the time he spent surrounded by his wife Linda, his children, and grandchildren. Ed was an avid world traveler, which fed his boundless curiosity for exploration and world cultures.
We at CTS are lucky and privileged to have known Ed. He was a gentle, kind, and generous spirit. We will miss you Ed. While we owe you a debt we cannot repay, we will honor your memory by ensuring that your optimism, your spirit of innovation and your kindness remain core values at CTS.
Ed is survived by his wife Linda, his daughters Peggy, Katy, and Libbie, his stepson James, stepdaughter Christine and his four grandchildren.
About CTS Cement Manufacturing Corp.
CTS Cement Manufacturing Corporation manufactures Rapid Set® professional-grade cement products and Komponent® Type K shrinkage-compensating cement for concrete repairs, restoration, and new construction projects. Contractors, owners, engineers and architects choose Rapid Set and Komponent to eliminate problems they have with other concrete repair materials, to save time and money, when superior durability is required, and results need to be structurally sound and aesthetically pleasing. For more information, please visit www.ctscement.com.
