On 4th July 2025, which happened to be American Independence Day and also coincided with Oasis’ reunion concert in Cardiff, CECA Wales hosted its Summer Lunch 2025 on the theme of “Celebrating Civil Engineering Contractors in Wales”. It was great to see so many of our members and guests together to celebrate what is such an exciting and inspiring industry.
Our headline sponsor was Future Valleys Co., who had just completed construction of Wales’ largest highway project, improving connectivity across the Heads of the Valleys – here’s a link to their video :
https://youtu.be/ijxv5GfqYw8 . Andrew Scott Ltd of Port Talbot also sponsored our pre-lunch drinks reception and our Summer Lunch brochure, which set out the format of the afternoon, was kindly sponsored by Walters UK and you can view it here : https://www.ceca.co.uk/ceca-wales-summer-lunch-2025.
The afternoon was hosted by S4C and Radio Cymru personality Eleri Sion who kept us all in line and injected humour, passion and energy to the proceedings. Over 20 of our member companies were able to join us at the Cardiff Bay venue which was also hosting Oasis’ Gallagher brothers ahead of their reunion gig at the stadium.
Our Chair, John Griffiths of Walters UK, kickstarted the event and, during the afternoon, we shared videos of CECA work across the UK https://youtu.be/9v7TU52myx0 and two films of CECA Wales member projects (Part 1 https://youtu.be/6SiLJ1Sowos and Part 2 CECA Wales Summer Lunch 2025 Member Films ). We’re extremely grateful to all our members who contributed footage for these films but, our intention is to collect further footage from all our members to compile a series of short films which we will be sharing with schools, colleges and other potential sources of new recruits to inspire a new workforce for the future. Watch this space!
We also featured our chosen charity which is the Sir Gareth Edwards Cancer Charity and we were joined by Sir Gareth, Lady Maureen and their daughter in law Eirlys who runs the charity. This is a remarkable charity which provides financial support for young people impacted by cancer. Grants have been provided across the whole of Wales from Connahs Quay to St Davids and from Ynys Mon to Newport and a whole load of bits in between. Our CECA Wales Foundation Group shared a video of their London to Paris cycle ride which raised over £20k for the charity https://youtu.be/8llSi4SJS-w . When combined with our auction of rugby and cycling shirts (signed by Sir Gareth) and previous donations via CECA Wales members the grand total has exceeded £35k. This has made a remarkable difference to those impacted by cancer and has meant that the charity has been able to increase the level of their grants.
Eleri also interviewed the Foundation Group members, shared their achievements and welcomed the new Foundation Group members. We very much hope that they will continue the good work especially in terms of attracting more young people to the sector and developing educational resources to support our members in their engagement with schools. You can find a copy of their report “Creating The Best Environment For Young Welsh Professionals To Thrive” which we launched at the lunch, here : https://www.ceca.co.uk/wales/foundation-group
The afternoon was closed off by the great Rod Woodward whose hilarious set kept everyone entertained right until the very end.
This afternoon lunch was a departure from our usual annual awards evenings but it is certainly something we will review with our board and potentially revisit in the future. Hopefully, this will also allow more of our members from further afield (north, mid and west) to join us. Watch this space. Here’s a few more photos from the day for you to enjoy!
Ed Evans
Director CECA Wales
Nice jacket!
