Our People

Gareth is a Chartered Accountant with 15 years of experience in Learning and Development roles; 5 years as a Learning Manager with Deloitte and 10 years as a training consultant with Kaplan and now Accordia. His experience on both sides of the L&D table help him to understand the commercial requirements and challenges facing L&D teams.

Gareth has spent his training career working for a range of different clients across the private and public sectors around the world. He brings a practical focus to his training delivery, understanding that the value in learning is found in the workplace application, not in a well-constructed slide deck!

Gareth firmly believes that the key to performance within a business is leadership at all levels role modelling the right behaviours. “The one constant across the organisations I’ve worked with is that where the leaders walk the talk, their people are more committed and motivated to deliver excellence.”

Jeff is a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Quality Professional who has worked in leadership roles for  over 30 years: initially as laboratory manager; then 16 years in various management positions including 9 years as Director of the British Standards Institution; 5 years  as MD of BNB Consultancy and Mentor Interface; and 12 years as Finance Director of Autism Bedfordshire.

Jeff has spent 20 years in training consultancy roles and has had brief academic stints as Professor of Operations for IEDE in Madrid and Fellow in Total Quality Management for IMC. Jeff has delivered training in about 40 different countries on four continents.

Jeff’s other roles include: Finance Director for Autism Bedfordshire; and sitting as member of the SIRA Safety and Management Systems Impartiality Committee.

Jeff currently specialises in various aspects of communication.

“I am passionate about people in organisations. I see my role as helping business get the most from their people, and people getting the most from their businesses!”

Paul is a Chartered Accountant who was educated in New Zealand and Paris before graduating with a Bachelor in Social Sciences from Birmingham University. His first career was leading external audits of clients in the transport, manufacturing and utilities sectors with Robson Rhodes in London, Birmingham and Paris. In 1994, Paul joined Courtaulds Chemicals as a Lead Internal Auditor for their Financial Management and Audit Services leading audits ranging from Financial Controls to General Operations, around the world

Paul’s 17 year career in training began in 1997 when he joined the Financial Training Company (FTC – later Kaplan) as a training consultant helping trainees from the Big Four accountants to qualify. Paul was responsible for the development of new tutors and ran the National Tutor Training programmes.

In 2002, Paul moved to Kaplan Hawksmere to run the division’s largest training account. Over 12 years he has worked many major training programmes from Treasury Accounting through to Risk Management and Finance Controls; Finance, Internal, Technical and HSSE Audit.

An Australia educated at the University of Melbourne, Claire graduated with both Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical Engineering) and a Bachelor of Science (Physics).  She began her career with BP, working at a road paving research centre, and for 14 years held a variety of posts in Engineering, Operations and Finance, before embarking on an international assignment in Azerbaijan, as a Safety Assurance Advisor on the BTC/SCP pipeline construction project.

Claire moved to the UK and took a post in the Safety and Operations group, formed after the Texas City Refinery incident.  Her roles were global auditor recruit and developing the audit prioritisation tool; and developed the auditor training pack, before becoming an auditor herself.

Since then, she has consulted to the oil and gas industry for organisations both small and large, and has taken on voluntary work managing build projects for local schools. She is a governor at a local state school.

“I believe that safety is key to running a successful business, getting it right the first time saves money and lives.”

Nigel began his working life in sales, logistics and distribution of engineering components and consumables. This led him to the British Standards Institution (BSI) in 1988 to develop quality management system (ISO 9001) certification in related sectors, including stock management and distribution.

As third party quality management system certification developed into other service industries Nigel became heavily involved in BSI’s accreditation. He was appointed as BSI’s first Environmental Certification Manager in 1992 including: certification management and development for BS7750/ISO 14001; and Accredited Verifier for the Eco-management and Audit Scheme (EMAS).

Customers for Nigel’s own consultancy, training and auditing company included: local authorities; multi nationals; small businesses; certification bodies; and both the UK and Irish national accreditation bodies.

Nigel presents auditor training courses accredited by the International Register of Certificated Auditors (IRCA). As an IRCA registered professional Lead Auditor himself, Member of the Chartered Quality Institute and a Chartered Quality Professional, he has trained hundreds of quality and environmental management system auditors.

Today Nigel’s company, Qualico (UK) Limited delivers accredited auditor training.

Nigel has been part of the Accordia team of specialist trainers delivering Technical Audit training in HSSE for many years.

Phil has over 30 years of experience in the Oil and Gas industry as a Geophysicist, HSSE advisor and manager, and audit training consultant.

From 1981 to 1989 he worked for Rees Geophysical Ltd and Seismograph Service England  Ltd as a geophysicist and  field crew party chief conducting seismic surveys and managing site crews of up to 1,500 persons for a range of Oil and Gas and Mining clients.

From 1989 to 1997 Phil worked as a Client Site Representative to offshore and onshore seismic exploration parties. In this role he worked with Shell, PDO, SPDC and Brunei Shell Petroleum. Included in his responsibilities were the conduct of technical and safety audits, site safety supervision and the development of HSE management systems for clients.

In 1997, Phil founded Awaken Consulting, a business specialising in risk management, structured systems of control and HSSE operations improvements and change. In this role Phil has worked in: Qatar, China, French Guyana, Sakhalin, Nigeria and Oman.

For over 14 years Phil has delivered HSSE&SP audit training around the globe.