Ex-Royal Navy Aircraft Engineer

Rapidly expanding Maritime Training and Competence Solutions Ltd (MTCS Ltd), who has virtually doubled its workforce in the last 12 months, has recently made a senior appointment to maintain their level of professional service to the offshore industry.

The highly experienced technical instructor, Jamie Thompson, started with MTCS Ltd, Windermere, this January, having previously spent 23 ½ years in the Royal Navy as an aircraft engineer. In his time spent in the RN, Jamie was in the Eastern Mediterranean in support of the gulf war in 1991; Global deployment 2000 visiting Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Columbia, USA and Tahiti; Gulf 2004/5 and Norway/Germany on detachment.

Qualified in Aeronautical Engineering, civil engineering, leadership training and graduate & leadership mapping on the GCGI career path, makes Jamie the perfect addition to MTCS Ltd.

British based, MTCS Ltd is a fully accredited assessment and training centre providing a spectrum of operational, technical and supervisory training to the offshore industry. The majority of their courses focus on Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) as used in the oil & gas, nuclear and renewables industry.

Moving his family to Cumbria in 2005, Jamie continued to live at the Royal Naval Air Station in Somerset and came home to Cumbria at weekends. Jamie finally left the Royal Navy in 2010, to take up a position with McBrides in Barrow-in-Furness, before accepting his new post at MTCS Ltd in January 2013.

Being used to instructing aircraft technicians on similar systems to the ones used by MTCS Ltd, Jamie feels quite at home in his new role – plus having gone through the process of leaving the Royal Navy, Jamie can relate to course candidates on just what it’s like to find their way, once they’ve left the forces:

“On my first day of taking an ROV induction course at MTCS Ltd, I couldn’t believe it when an ex colleague from my old squadron turned up on the course! It was great to be able to help him and to make him and the other candidates feel that I understood what they were going through. Recently, I finished instructing a team of Croatian divers/electricians on the MTCS ROV Pilot induction course, so many of them were picking up on their English skills as well as learning to ROV pilot! You find that many service leavers on MTCS Ltd courses come from different skill-sets, such as electrical, electronic, and mechanical. There have also been some UAV Pilots from the forces with the relevant technical background. Due to the spread of engineering expertise some trainees will be naturally better at certain aspects of the course and vice versa.

“I say to them, right, for the electricians amongst you, certain areas of the course will be familiar to you so be patient as this will be completely new for some Trainees. Then when we do Hydraulics I advise similarly to the more mechanically biased members of the class. This enables me to give a good level of training to a variety of engineering disciplines and experience levels.

“MTCS Ltd is an excellent training provider, where the atmosphere is friendly and relaxed and therefore conducive to learning. I feel that my role here gives me the opportunity to bring together all the experience I have acquired over the years, both hands-on and as a trainer – and I’m really looking forward to being part of the growth and development of MTCS Ltd.”

Jamie’s role at MTCS Ltd is to deliver the ROV Pilot Open Induction course and the High Voltage and Hydraulics Open courses – not just to ex-service people, but also to company employees, such as Subsea 7 and supervisors of other subsea companies.

Jamie concluded: “Initially, I will be responsible for training at the Windermere site, head office for MTCS Ltd, with training in Venezuela coming up quite soon. Although I must say, it’s nice to be spending some time in the UK after being sent all over the world for such a long time!”

As part of the MTCS Ltd expansion, a new ROV, the Seaeye Falcon, will be arriving at MTCS Ltd, Windermere, at the end of this month.

Joins UK Marine Training Company MTCS Limited