The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 40: Dec/Jan 2018/19 | Page 34
BUSINESS NEWS
Diver & former RAF squadron
leader shares knowledge at
leading UK diving conference
UNIQUE BUSINESS MEETING
VENUE: THE HEAD SHED
HR expert Pippa Richardson is celebrating the
completion of her unique business venue which
she has spent months renovating just yards from
her own farmhouse in the village of Whitley, near
Melksham.
The Head Shed is just 15 minutes from
Junction 17, so within easy reach of local
businesses and was until a year ago a
dilapidated farm shed.
Pippa said: “Having facilitated hundreds
of meetings as an HR Director operating
within FTSE 250 companies, I know what
makes the perfect venue. I saw a lack of
choice in Wiltshire and this motivated me
to create a venue of high calibre in my own
‘back yard’ so to speak.
“The importance of finding the right
venue for business meetings, workshops
or courses, is an often forgotten and
underestimated factor in ensuring
successful meetings.”
Pippa has transformed the farm shed,
which probably housed cows, into a venue
which is far removed from a corporate
meeting room or bland hotel conference
room. She said: “I’ve designed The
Head Shed to provide the perfect space
for meeting participants, for teams and
individuals to find clarity of thought, to focus,
get energised, get creative, make great
plans and importantly, make better business
decisions, faster.”
Five years ago, Pippa gave up her
fast-paced and high-pressured corporate
HR career to run her own independent
consultancy. “I wanted to choose the
projects I wanted to work on and help the
people I knew I would enjoy working with,”
said Pippa. This change coincided with
Pippa and her husband Peter purchasing
Lagard Farm in Whitley. Pippa immediately
saw the potential of the disused outbuilding
as a business meeting venue and would help
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THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2018
her create her own work/life balance.
Paula Power, independent trainer
accredited by Mental Health First Aid (MHFA)
England, has already tried out The Head
Shed. She said: “It’s a fantastic venue. The
unique environment Pippa has created
is conducive to great meetings, great
ideas, great innovations and great working
relationships. I will certainly be using it
again.” The Head Shed is equipped with all
the necessary business tools, offers WiFi and
business broadband, with parking for up to
ten cars with additional parking nearby.
Additionally, The Bothy, located just
beside The Head Shed, can provide furnished
self-catering accommodation (limited to two
persons) for visiting C-level executives, or
clients delivering training sessions.
The Head Shed is available from £157 a
day for up to 12 delegates and can be hired
for half days as well as evenings.
Refreshments of tea, coffee, still and
sparkling water as well as homemade
biscuits are offered as standard or Pippa will
work with meeting organisers on tailor-
made buffets. When buffet refreshments
are ordered, depending on the number of
delegates, Pippa can offer a delegate day
rate which and waive part of the room hire
charge.
“The Head Shed is part of my home. I
want meeting participants to feel they are my
guests and to benefit from great meetings
held in a very special venue,” said Pippa.
Find out more:
web: www.theheadshed.org.uk
email: [email protected]
or call: 07990 794700
Former RAF Squadron Leader and high-
risk diver Gareth Lock will be sharing
his expertise at the international Eurotek
conference to be held in Birmingham.
Gareth, who lives with his family in
Malmesbury, will be giving a talk entitled
The Diver’s Dilemma: Managing the Balance
Between Risk, Reward and Pressures on
Sunday December 2.
Entrepreneur Gareth, the founder of
Human In The System, applies skills
developed from military aviation to improve
diving safety and to help business leaders
perform better within their organisations.
He said: “A lot of diving is about risk
management based on perceived risks. My
presentation will be about how we really
manage risk and uncertainty in high-risk
sports and I’ll be looking at the mental
biases and shortcuts we take with the
associated problems that they introduce
when it comes to understanding our own
personal and team safety.”
On Saturday December 1 at Eurotek,
Gareth, who has twice been nominated for
the Divers Alert Network Safety Diver of the
Year award, will also be launching his 75-
page e-book which contains three chapters
from his forthcoming book, Under Pressure,
which is due out in early 2019. The e-book
will be available from his diving website,
www.thehumandiver.com
It’s been a busy few months for Gareth,
who was in the RAF for 25 years. He was
in Mexico in September where he ran a
successful training session for a number of
cave-diving explorers. Following that, a trip
For more info:
www.humaninthesystem.co.uk
to Lake Tahoe saw him run a training session
for the American Academy of Underwater
Sciences.
“I presented a proposal to develop a
programme to help their divers, dive safety
officers and dive control boards improve the
safety and performance of their teams as
well as improve their research. The proposal
was accepted, so I’ve been tasked with
writing specific training materials for them,”
he said.
He has just returned from a diving
conference in Germany, where he gave a
presentation entitled Divers as Heroes and
Divers as Villains.
In November he was a guest speaker
at the Diving Equipment & Marketing
Association conference in Las Vegas, and
trained five senior staff from the Divers Alert
Network in Malta on human factors and non-
technical skills.
The courses provided by Gareth
through his company Human In The
System, educates divers – or any team
undertaking any activity – the importance
of decision-making, situational awareness,
communication skills, teamwork and
managing stress and fatigue.
If you want to know more about how
Human In The System can help your team
visit www.humaninthesystem.co.uk or
email [email protected].
The Eurotek advanced diving conference
takes place on the weekend of December
1 and 2 at the Birmingham Repertory
Theatre. For more information, visit:
eurotek.uk.com