By: Nick Swailes, Senior Associate

Every December, amidst the hustle and bustle of year-end activities, the entire DFC team get together for a much anticipated and well-deserved celebration. This year we gathered at Center Parcs – Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire and what a great event it turned out to be for a bit of festive cheer and time in each other’s company! I can assure you that not even the classic Christmas drizzle could dampen our high spirits!

We kicked off the day with some lively presentations from our management team. They brought us up to speed on all the exciting developments in each area of the business, what we achieved in the last twelve months, and laid out our grand plans for the coming year. We covered everything from groundbreaking research to recruitment successes and financial wizardry. It was an opportunity to take stock of where we are and, more importantly, where we want to be in 2025.

And yes, we made sure to raise a toast to all the amazing projects we’ve collectively completed, the wonderful clients we’ve worked with, the research we’ve conducted, the buildings we’ve handed over, as well as some significant business milestones such as new offices and new team members. Far more importantly, in my opinion, we also got to congratulate and celebrate with our colleagues on the many weddings, engagements, degrees, babies and more that our colleagues achieved in the last twelve months.

What made this gathering particularly unique was that it was our first chance to meet up since DFC became an Employee Ownership Trust . The EOT represents a significant, positive step for DFC. It felt like a landmark moment and the beginning of a new chapter – so it was fitting that we were all together to recognise and celebrate that jump into a new era and start planning our goals for next year as an employee-owned company.

After the morning’s productive discussions, the afternoon was spent doing a range of fun team-building activities featuring technical and physical challenges against the clock. It was an engaging and challenging way to bond, get to know some of our new colleagues better and see people showcasing their skills. And that’s easy for me to say as a member of the winning team, not that I can claim much of the credit! Having also been on the winning team at our 2023’s cooking school, a few of us are already looking forward to going for the hat trick in 2025.

Then came one of my favourite activity of the day – the poster session from our graduate engineers. Over the summer, our recent graduates rolled up their sleeves at UCLan to spend some time in the labs, see common fire phenomena in practice and get their hands a bit dirty. Armed with what they learnt from UCLan, they went into to producing some top-quality posters on all manner of fire science topics, including the trench effect, backdraft, flashover, gas explosions and calorimetry to name but a few. I must say that everyone truly appreciated their efforts in making this one of the highlight activities! The posters were detailed and sparked interesting discussions among the group. They also served as a reminder for those of us who haven’t conducted lab tests or written posters ourselves for years, and in some cases, decades (and in at least one case, it was a millennia ago!). It was worth it for the opportunity to see the presenters’ passion for the topic and their demonstrated subject knowledge made it all worthwhile. I’m consistently impressed by our graduates and this was no exception.

After a delicious three course dinner, we dove into our Secret Santa gift exchange, with a twist: presents were only allowed to be socks! It’s fair to say some did better than others – I think I’d rather have the comfy bamboo socks stuffed with a miniature bottle of whisky over the socks with a picture of a colleague’s face all over them! The fun continued into the evening with tabletop games, a photobooth and, for the adventurous few, a party lodge! (or so I here). The following morning, the venue truly came alive, offering everything from swimming and daring rapids to play sports, paintballing, mountain biking or just a good old-fashioned fry-up for those of us recovering from a night of merriment.

All in all, it was a great event that reminded us of what makes DFC special – the people.

I’m continually reminded of the same two thoughts at these events: “Isn’t it great to be together in person with everyone?”, quickly followed by “We really must do this more often!”. With that in mind, we’re planning to organise more gatherings in 2025, and I, for one, can’t wait.

A special thanks to our Business Support team, who organise this fantastic event for all of us.