Pulteneytown Peoples Project and Home Link Caithness Directors

DIRECTOR'S PROFILES

Grant Ramsay – Chairperson

Grant was appointed Chairperson for Pulteneytown People’s Project in 2008. He worked for 18 years in industry as an engineer, and was also a department manager during this time. He is currently a teacher at Wick High School, involved with the Princes trust Excel and Duke of Edinburgh Awards, working in conjunction with Pulteneytown People’s Project in this role. Grant is always actively involved in the project’s fund raising events.

Yvonne Hendry - Director

Yvonne works as development officer for Caithness Voluntary Group, and was one of the first employees of Pulteneytown People’s Project, where she held the role of Funding/Finance Manager. She has been a volunteer advisor for Caithness Citizens Advice Bureau for 8 years and is also involved in other local voluntary committees.

Anne Belton – Director

Anne is a local resident who has years of experience on committees. She is actively involved in and helps to manage the ‘ladies groups’ that the project has up and running. She too has experience and knowledge that has been most helpful in her role as a Director and she regularly helps out at our fund raising events.

Eric Farquhar – Director

Eric has many years of experience as a secondary school teacher, a further education officer and head teacher. Now retired, he continues to provide Support for Learning at Wick High School and is also a board member for Wick Players, a local drama organisation. Eric has been instrumental in raising the profile of Pulteneytown People’s Project, actively promoting the project by giving presentations to numerous community groups.

Tom Allan - Director

Tom is a retired local resident who was previously Assistant Head at Wick High School. He was also in charge of the Highland-wide Technical Vocational Education Initiative, which was brought about to equip all school and college students in the 14-18 age group with the knowledge and skills required for success in adult working life. In this role he has a proven track record of successfully applying for funding. Tom has also had written work published as well as editing books for Oxford University Press.

Neil Bain - Director

Neil is a retired local resident with over 40 years experience in the building and infrastructure industry. He worked for 30 years as a foreman for John Laing & Sons Ltd (a developer and operator of privately financed, public sector infrastructure projects) in England, France and Germany. On his return to Wick he was the Clerk of Works for the construction of Caithness General Hospital in Wick and latterly was in charge of the construction of the pier at Scrabster Harbour in Thurso.

Stewart Henderson – Adviser to Project Board, Community Centre Build

Stewart is Project Manager for National Nuclear Archive who has 40 years experience as an architect (20 years working for local government, including 10 years as City Architect in Edinburgh),

Shona Kirk – Director

Shona Kirk has twenty-one years’ experience in the nuclear industry in a variety of business support, business information and commercial roles and she has an excellent understanding of the compilation, management and monitoring of very large site programmes. Her recent experience has extended her skills to include major contract proposal management, market research and business plan implementation at company level. Shona currently works for the Babcock Group managing the preparation of successful proposals to major clients. Shona is committed to using her business skills to search for and develop opportunities that bring benefit to both Babcock and the local business community.

Simon Coles – Director

Simon is a Chartered Engineer with over 20 years experience in maintenance engineering, operations, project, programme and commercial management. Joined Babcock in 2010 to take up the role of Business Manager. In addition to his engineering degree and a number of vocational management qualifications, Simon has a Masters in business Administration (MBA). Simon has recent experience of board operations, being a Director of Decom North Sea Ltd, an industry led forum established with initial funding from HIE, Scottish Enterprise and Department of Energy and Climate Change to stimulate and develop the UK based supply chain for decommissioning oil and gas facilities in the North Sea. In this capacity, Simon has also encouraged Caithness based organisations to utilise their knowledge and experience gained at Dounreay to diversify away from any dependency on Dounreay as its decommissioning programme progresses.

Simon has a strong commitment to assist in the diversification of the Caithness economy and he looks to identify opportunities for this.