Alex Lewis Wins This Year’s Nick Edwards Gold Award
Named in honour of our friend, colleague and one of the founding members of CoolLED, the annual Nick Edwards Gold Award recognises someone who has made an outstanding contribution to the company and consistently demonstrates the qualities that make CoolLED such a great place to work.
This year’s award was presented during our Annual Training Day, held at Marwell Zoo for the first time ever.
After finishing as runner-up last year, we’re delighted to announce that the winner of the 2026 Nick Edwards Gold Award is Alex Lewis from Production Engineering.
Why Alex?
If you’ve worked with Alex, you’ll already know why. He’s one of those people who quietly makes life easier for everyone around him. Whether something needs fixing, investigating or simply getting over the line, Alex can always be relied upon to help.
Over the past few years he has:
- Supported colleagues across the business whenever a technical or production challenge has cropped up.
- Taken on difficult jobs without hesitation and worked calmly through them until a solution was found.
- Shared his knowledge generously, helping others understand problems rather than simply fixing them himself.
- Stepped beyond the boundaries of his own role whenever another person or department has needed support.
- Remained positive, approachable and good-humoured, even when the pressure is on and the workload is piling up.
There’s a reassuring calmness to the way Alex works. He never looks for praise or makes a fuss. He simply gets stuck in, helps wherever he can and does everything possible to make sure the people around him succeed.
He is kind, dependable and seemingly always positive. He is also the sort of colleague who will make time for someone, no matter how busy he might already be.
First up, morning activities…
There was plenty of excitement ahead of this year’s Annual Training Day, as the whole company headed to Marwell Zoo for the first time.
The morning began with a company update from our Managing Director, Jake Davies, who reflected on CoolLED’s recent performance and shared what lies ahead for the business.
We were also delighted to welcome two guest speakers from companies closely connected to CoolLED.
Johan Vänelid from Kromnigon and Ed Saint from Scientifica gave brilliant introductions to their companies, the work they do and how they fit within the wider CoolLED ecosystem.
The morning concluded with a thought-provoking session on digital wellbeing, which highlighted our sometimes less-than-healthy relationship with technology and encouraged us to think more carefully about our everyday digital habits.
An Afternoon of Zoo Fun
After lunch, it was time to leave the meeting room and explore the zoo.
Everyone was divided into red, blue, orange, yellow, purple and green teams before being given a list of 50 scavenger hunt challenges to complete around Marwell.
These included taking a photograph of the entire team posing as flamingos, making it appear as though somebody was riding one of the animals and creating a zoo-themed album cover. Each team approached the tasks in their own unique way and resulted in some, shall we say, ‘interesting’ photos…
Creativity, teamwork and personal dignity were all tested.
The scavenger hunt eventually led to a final showdown requiring brains, planning, strategy and skill.
Unfortunately, the orange team (my team) arrived with very limited supplies of all four.
Following a fiercely contested finale, the red team emerged victorious and claimed the title of 2026 Annual Training Day champions.
Pictured from left to right are Rob, Fraser, Louise, Mike, Debbie and Avik. Not a bad start for Fraser, who literally only joined CoolLED a few days before!
A Final Thank You
A huge thank you to Johan and Ed for joining us and sharing more about Kromnigon and Scientifica, and to everyone who helped organise another memorable CoolLED Annual Training Day.
Marwell Zoo proved to be a brilliant setting for a day of company updates, valuable discussions, questionable photography and some highly competitive team challenges.
Most importantly, congratulations once again to Alex Lewis, our thoroughly deserving 2026 Nick Edwards Gold Award winner.
