club meeting

20th May 2021 Zoom Meeting – A spontaneous Life – from Teaching to Project Management – Duncan Garment

Duncan's tale starts with his Birth in Brighton and Hove, attending Xaverian College in Brighton before moving to Guildford where he completed his schooling and also worked for 8 years on his “Saturday job” at Robert Dyas and on to his Degree in Electrical Engineering. He was sponsored through his Degree sandwich course by the ERA Leatherhead (Electrical Research Association), where he started his first ‘proper job‘ in their switchgear lab for 2 years, moving on to the High Voltage lab for a further 4 years, working with very high voltages, creating lightning for various tests in what was quite a dangerous and solitary role. Thus came the initial spontaneous move into teaching, having obtained his PGCE certificate and obtaining a post at Bishop Reindorp School Guildford teaching Maths to A level students and progressing through Exam Secretary to become the Head of House to about 300 students. The school is now called Christ’s College.

Then came the second spontaneous move, following a phone call from The EU Delegate to Lesotho who asked if he would like to set up an Electrical Engineering Course in a Technician Training School in Lesotho (Africa)…. This had been triggered by an old school friend who was setting up a Mechanical Engineer Course at the same place.

On offering his resignation the Principal, despite thinking that Duncan was mad, said he would keep his job open for 2 years.  So off went Duncan, Penny and their 3 children to Lesotho, without anything in writing, flying from Heathrow to Johannesburg (with no tickets until they turned up at the BA check-in desk), finally arriving in Maseru (Lesotho) without their luggage (lost en-route!) to start his contract at the Technician Training School (TTS) which was part of the Lerotholi Technical Institute. He then discovered there were no equipment, no books, so Hughes Electrical Technology Book (held in his hand luggage!) became his Bible for the next 5 weeks. They remained in the Victoria Hotel for ten weeks, waiting for the housing they had been promised. Unhappy with the lack of housing the EU Delegate had been stirring things up behind the scene with the Ministry. This was shortly followed by Duncan being called into the Director's office and confronted by a Government official claiming he had been complaining.  This so annoyed the EU Delegate that he flew Duncan and family back to the UK for 6 weeks after which they returned to the TTS and a HOUSE where they lived for 9 years. After a slow start the courses were eventually up and running to Duncan’s satisfaction after about 4 years.

He was then asked to stay on to Project Manage the upgrading of the Lerotholi Technical Institute to the Lerotholi Polytechnic which was a spin-off requirement for the implementation of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), whilst keeping an eye on the electrical courses and mentoring his counterpart who had taken over.

But life was not all work and no play. There were plenty of thing to do like - Amateur Dramatics with the Maseru Players, activities with the local Round Table such as the annual raft race on the river Caledon, the local St George's Society (founder chairman), Morris Dancing - the team once performed before the king and Duncan's students performed the Basotho equivalent which was the Wellie Dance (shown on Lesotho TV!). He also had time (2 years) to help a friend restore a Fowler Steam Road Roller which they drove across the border from Ladybrand (RSA) to Maseru.

But then all good things come to an end and it was back to the UK, were he secured a position with TechQuipment (TQ), a Nottinghamshire company that worked with educational projects all over the World.  His first project was with the Turkey Team to purchase extra equipment for the £10m underspend on the original project and to help YÖK (The Council of Higher Education – Turkey) to identify and develop certain centres of Educational Excellence. He then moved onto Romania to explore the possibility of setting up a similar project, visiting all the 48 State owned Universities 3 times.

He explained that this type of project work was usually a stop-start operation with periods of inactivity’s during which he worked on  other stop-start projects in Oman, Libya, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.

UK based projects followed which found him managing the following projects:

• Welbeck Defence 6^th Form College – in partnership with Interserve. TQ had responsibility for the educational equipment and training side of this move from Welbeck Abbey to the new purpose built facilities on the old Garets Hay Barracks site at Woodhouse Eaves and Interserve had the construction and facilities management side of the contract.
• In the operational “gaps” he managed the MOD's OPTAG contract which was to supply Iraq nationals (TELIC) and Afghanistan nationals (HERRICK) for UK based troop pre-deployment training.

Duncan’s term was ‘spontaneous’, I would suggest ‘adventurous and brave’, working and travelling all over the World sharing his knowledge and interpersonal skills.

Clive proposing a Vote of Thanks for Duncan’s very informative and beautifully illustrated presentation, echoed by President Derek, then well supported with ‘visual applause’                       AR