Optical Services Ltd

The most important factors in training are the skills and experience of the trainer. At Lucid, all of our trainers are very highly qualified experts within fibre optics and their specialist fields, with many years of industry experience. They are reliable, friendly and patient. Training professionals who provide not only the best possible training, but also technical support second to none!

Furthermore, all of our trainers are permanent members of staff, involved in developing and updating "their" courses. They are not contract staff who come in just to go through the motions. Our staff are proud of the quality of training they deliver as expert Lucid trainers.

In total our staff have a combined experience of communications cabling (both fibre optic and copper) of over 125 years, each bringing their extra special skill-sets with them. Topics such as performing field dispersion measurements may seem relatively new to many fibre test engineers, but our trainers were involved in field Polarisation Mode Dispersion measurements and report writing in 1995, and Chromatic Dispersion measurements some years before this.

John Colton, BSc (Hons): Technical Director

John's background is in optical fibre instrumentation, measurements, calibration & troubleshooting. He has worked with most fibre measurement instruments over the years, and is an expert on OTDR, PMD and chromatic dispersion measurements, not to mention a few less well known fibre measurements!
John is also a director of the Fibreoptic Industry Association (FIA) with responsibility for training and joint responsibility for qualifications. He is an invited member of the National Advisory Council for ICT, and a member of the Telecommunications Sector Action Group (TSAG) organised by e-skills. Having been a regular attendee at FOToN (previously OFMeC) meetings from 1990, recently John has left Lucid's Neil Haigh (below) to report back since Neil acts as chairman for this NPL organised meeting forum. Indeed many have commented that they haven't seen John recently at fibre optic conferences and meetings, and this is largely due to Neil attending more of these events whilst John has been working more on skills and industry qualifications for various organisations.
Recently John was retained as an expert witness in a major telecoms dispute that has now been successfully resolved. He is currently retained as an Examiner/Moderator by City and Guilds for the development of their 3666, 3662 and 3663 programmes. John has also assisted in the development of several awards, at different levels, through the Open College Network (OCN), for both the cabling industry and the ICT industry.

Peter Rossall, Cert. Ed. (FE): Internal Moderator, Internal Verifier.

Peter is one of our City & Guilds experts. Prior to joining Lucid, Peter was head of a national communications training centre for 10 years, and was closely involved in setting up the original City & Guilds fibre optics qualifications and course syllabus.
Before turning to training full-time, Peter gained valuable experience installing cables and managing a wide range of installations around the world.
Peter has now reduced his active training role, after a few very busy and hectic years at the beginning of Lucid. Peter now acts as our internal moderator, for both City and Guilds and Open College Network (OCN) awards, and must take some of the credit for the outstanding reports we get on our training centre from these respected awarding bodies. Additionally, Peter's wide-ranging experience in the industry is a particularly valuable resource to us when we are developing new material or courses.

Steve Dobson: Senior Trainer.

Steve is responsible for our new copper courses, both structured cabling and telecoms, and also works on Lucid's City & Guilds and optical fibre cable installation courses. Steve has been in the telecoms/cabling industry for over 28 years, in both installation, project planning and auditing for both copper & fibre optic networks. In addition to his telecoms cabling background, Steve has developed several datacoms training courses and has considerable experience of copper datacoms cabling.
For the last 8 years Steve has worked as a full time fibre optics, copper telecoms and structured cabling trainer.

 

Dave Gallivan: Technical Trainer

Dave has a very wide experience in the communications sector, having been responsible for overhead, underground, internal and external cable installation and testing both in UK and overseas. He has worked with both fibre and copper cables for both telecoms and datacoms applications and has carried out blown fibre installations.
Dave's career has taken him from hands-on splicing and testing to supervisory, management and training roles, plus some technical sales work for a specialist product manufacturer before joining Lucid as a professional trainer. Having worked as a technical trainer prevously, it was nice to hear Dave express his surprise at the quality of the training Lucid deliver and the levels and range of equipment we have for each course. Working with Steve and Peter, Dave has already contributed signifcantly to the further development of our copper D-side courses.

Geoff R. Davies Professor: Senior Consultant .

Geoff started his career as a research scientist in ICI, working on the electrical properties of organic solids. He then moved to the University of Leeds, first as a lecturer, then reader and finally Professor of Polymer Science. His experimental interests include mechanical and electrical properties of polymers, side-chain liquid crystalline polymers for non-linear optic applications and ionically conductive polymers. He has also worked with laser-doppler velocimetry. At Lucid, Geoff is working on new training courses; consultancy projects; and forging closer links with universities.

 

Annette Colton, MSc, PhD.

Annette is involved in the development of our advanced courses and consultancy work. Whilst studying for a masters degree at the Danish Technical University where she won several scholarships. Her PhD thesis was on work carried out at the prestigious European JET Joint Undertaking project near Oxford, on secondment from Risø the Danish National Laboratory. Annettes background is in experimental plasma physics, radiation transfer, and Earth observation by satellites for environmental monitoring. She has authored several peer-reviewed journal and conference papers on these subjects, much of this work having involved mathematical and computer modelling. These talents have more recently been applied to several of Lucid's client consultancy projects involving the mathematical modelling of optical and fibre optic problems.

 

Sarah Cowperthwaite, BA (Hons).

Sarah joined us in June 2006 as a sales and office administrator after completing a degree in English Language at Lancaster University. Previously she gained relevant experience in customer facing roles and office jobs during a year out and holiday periods. Sarah’s role is to respond to customer enquiries and help them find the right course and solution to their needs, and generally keeping everything in the office running smoothly. We’re sure you’ll find Sarah friendly and helpful if you have any questions or problems she can assist with.

Having grown up locally, Sarah is happy to be working in Garsdale where her family have farmed for many years. Indeed our offices are in a large converted barn that was formerly part of Sarah’s great uncle’s farm. At weekends and holidays Sarah is either helping on her family’s farm down Garsdale or following her passion for motorsport and motorbikes.

Peter Colton: Director.

After retiring from BNFL, where he was in charge of a world-class mass spectrometry laboratory, Peter took on a Lucid Directorship. In this quite different role, Peter is responsible for our new premises, as Architect, Clerk-of-Works, chief Plumber and Electrician! He also gets involved in any aspect of the business that requires planning or an extra pair of hands.

 

Denise: Hospitality Manager

Denise helps on a voluntary basis, and is responsible for arranging lunch and refreshments when we have courses at our training centre. These are responsibilities she takes very seriously as we attempt to ensure that every aspect of your time with us is as comfortable as possible. Also the one who remembers to water the plants and let the rest of us know when we have neglected them!

Contract Trainer: Bruce Leslie

Bruce is an experienced telecoms trainer and consultant. He has joined us on a contract to work for us delivering and developing some training, but will not be quite full time with us as he has some other commitments. We will provide a fuller summary of Bruce's experience in the industry shortly.

Contract Trainers in general

Lucid have previously been concerned about using contract trainers were there can be issues of quality, familiarity with training materials and confidentiality for the client. To address these points we work with a small group of contract trainers and consultants so that we can ensure they are immersed in the Lucid culture and know our materials and expectations well. This small list of contract trainers we use includes Dr Neil Haigh, who previously worked with us full-time, and so knows our courses (particularly our laser safety courses) well, and Andy Voizey who is a specialist aerospace consultant who helps with our fibre optics in aerospace training courses.

This could be you?

Interested in a career with Lucid? If so then visit our careers page to see current opening or send us a CV to put on record for any openings we may have in the near future.