Peter Tickner BA (Hons) MA MSc PGCE CMIOSH AIEMA
Senior Health & Safety Consultant
Peter gained professional experience as a Factory Inspector, Safety Advisor and as a Consultant for a national brewery based in Bristol. He specialises in providing pragmatic safety & environmental management solutions and resolving legal and enforcement issues, as well as presenting a range of training courses.
Close-up...on Peter Tickner (featured in September2006's CHSS Connection Newsletter)
Connection: You joined CHSS two years ago, what previous health & safety work had you been involved in?
Peter Tickner: For about the last twenty years, I've been working in the health & safety profession, so it would take a small novel to detail all the work I've done.
For much of my life I've been involved in teaching and until two years ago I was a lecturer and tutor on the NEBOSH course at Bristol University .
I have run my own business and been a Regional Safety Advisor for Courage Ltd, where I was responsible for the provision and development of health & safety services at the Bristol Brewery. That included ten depots, two thousand six hundred pubs, the primary and secondary delivery fleets and technical services.
Before that, I worked as an Inspector for HM Factory Inspectorate
Connection: Your first university degree was in Zoology, specialising in Ecology and Ethology (the zoological study of animal behaviour), how did you move into health & safety?
PT: I always had an interest in animal behaviour and also ecology, so I decided to take that for my degree, however, getting a job in that field is very difficult, unless you have a personal income to fall back on. So first of all I took a gap year, to have a think; it ended up being four years and in that time I walked and hitch-hiked across Africa to Capetown.
When I returned home, I took a teaching degree and an MA in cognitive development in children, which was a natural step on from ethology! I taught science 'A' levels at secondary school for ten years. After that, I decided to follow my life long passion in ecology and took an MSc in Radioactive Waste - this is what finally led me into HSE, albeit a very long way round.
Connection: Your work at CHSS has taken you around the world, can you give us a taste of some of the more unusual projects?
PT: One of the first projects I worked on for CHSS was for Pfizer where I designed and implemented an environmental management system, it was great work, but the thing which always sticks in my mind was that whilst I completed the work I stayed near Pfizer's offices in Ham, Sandwich in Kent, which really tickled me!
From a humorous story like that, to a very dark and disturbing one, I was asked to analyse the no smoking policy at a NHS trust where a nurse had been brutally murdered as she took a smoking break.
Very recently, I've been auditing a quarry and smelting plant in Southern Siberia . On one day at the beginning of June, the temperature ranged from minus 5 degrees Celsius to plus 26 degrees Celsius and there was snow on the ground in many areas.
My next project is for Kuwait Petroleum Company, so I'm sure there'll be some interesting stories there.
Connection: What about your life outside of work?
PT: I'm an avid walker; the walk across Africa fired my interest. I'm also passionate about music; folk music particularly and still play the hammered dulcima and bodhran (Irish drum) at folk nights and festivals. I'm also a real ale or proper beer fan, I enjoy cooking, and like good wine and single malts. | 
