Cardiff International White Water Centre

I was kindly invited by the Chairman to dust off my tux and attend the Civil Engineering Contractor’s Association (CECA) Wales dinner last Friday. Before the dinner, I got the chance to meet the top table guests with Alun and to have a good talk to the Griffiths Contracting staff before taking a seat with them. The old cliché is that Contractor’s events are a bit more raucous than others and I suppose the CECA dinner to a degree didn’t disappoint. Howard Mark’s after dinner speech was certainly controversial but a welsh male voice choir tempered the mood perfectly. The speeches covered the difficulties of the economic climate and challenge ahead of government spending cutbacks, but also presented a positive message of successes during the year.

ICE Wales Cymru had a ‘school trip’ this week. As a change from evening lectures in the Trevithick we had a site visit to the newly completed Cardiff International White Water Rafting Centre in the Cardiff Bay Sports Village.

The first thing that struck me from the Simon Howell’s presentation was how good a job the Harbour Authority he manages are doing. The regeneration of the Bay has been a huge success and as a result the Authority was able to fund a substantial amount of the Centre from savings. Simon went into detail on the design and construction of the Centre. The Centre’s reservoir, surrounded by a steel pile wall, enables careful monitoring of water quality (purged from the River Ely) which maximises the days the Centre is operational. At a cost of around £13m, you have to say it was good value when you compare it to the English equivalent currently under construction which has a 50m longer course but is costing three times as much. Combined with the new other developments coming through, the Sports Village is really starting to take shape. It’ll be interesting to see where it is in another five years from now.

Some photos below from the visit showing the course with and without the water pumping, plus the elevator to transport you and your boat back to the top. Sadly, we didn’t get the opportunity to test it out!