Thomas Pleavin Wins CoolLED’s Nick Edwards Gold Award 2025
Named in honour of our friend, colleague and one of the founding members of CoolLED – the Gold Award celebrates the spirit he embodied:
Curiosity, kindness, and a refusal to settle for “good enough”.
There were a number of the CoolLED team who received votes from their colleagues but there can only be one winner…
Thomas Pleavin from Engineering is this year’s winner of the Nick Edwards Gold Award!
Why Thomas?
If you’ve worked with Thomas, you know the answer. He’s the person you call when a project slips into the “this might be impossible” zone. Over the past few years he has:
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Unpicked stubborn design problems without drama.
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Turned around fixes at a pace that made scheduling suddenly look easy.
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Stepped in, again and again, to help other teams when something puzzling cropped up.
- Taken on more responsibility and always manages to stay cheerful and helpful even when under pressure.
There’s a quiet reliability to the way he works: no fuss, no grandstanding, just clean solutions and a willingness to share what he’s learned.
The award exists to recognise exactly that sort of contribution – talent backed by graft, generosity and a genuine commitment to making CoolLED better every day.
A big mention must also be given to our runner up – Alex Lewis – who works in our Production Engineering department. He’s the sort of chap who’s always going above and beyond to support his colleagues; never shying away from taking anything on and is always positive and helpful.
Setting the Stage
The award capped off a full and varied away day at Audleys Wood Hotel near Basingstoke. The morning was devoted to company insight:
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Jake Davies (Managing Director) set the scene with a look at how we’re performing and where we’re heading.
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Louise Hedges (Sales & Marketing Director) followed with a clear-eyed view of the markets we serve and the opportunities ahead.
We also welcomed two guest speakers who reminded us just how far CoolLED’s reach extends:
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James Miles (Hawk Biosystems) shared how their team is advancing cancer screening, powered in part by a CoolLED pE‑400. Hearing about real patient impact put a quiet weight behind the work we do; and we also had another guest speaker join us to talk about industrial inspection and how LEDs could play a part in that too.
Before lunch, St John’s Ambulance led a practical session on CPR and defibrillators. Yes, there were dummies. Yes, everyone had a go. And yes, it’s reassuring to know that most people in the company can now at least keep you alive long enough for an ambulance to arrive.
An Afternoon of Organised Chaos
Post‑sandwiches, the tone shifted. We split into colour‑coded teams and tackled a list of challenges that can only be described as “enthusiastically ridiculous”.
The bin‑bag fashion parade set the bar: improvised trench coats, avant‑garde capes and one surprisingly elegant bustle made from gaffer tape and leaves. Then came the impromptu dance routines… the word ‘choreography’ might be being slightly generous, but commitment was undeniable.
The scavenger hunt sent people barrelling around the hotel grounds in search of obscure items, before everyone reconvened for egg‑parachute engineering. Paper straws, string and sheer optimism kept a few eggs intact; others met a dignified, if slightly sticky, end.
We even had to “recreate a famous movie scene” which delivered an eyebrow-raising still from Dirty Dancing, a unique take on the Titanic, as well as a door-shatteringly excellent shot from The Shining.
It was tight, but the Blue Team edged the win by just two points – helped by some lateral thinking, ingenuity and a healthy bribe to the organisers (probably).
A Final Thank You
Events like this don’t happen by themselves. Thank you to everyone who presented, planned, herded, filmed, fetched, and fashioned. And of course, congratulations again to Thomas; a worthy winner whose work quietly underpins so much of what we achieve.
