RAID have announced that two of the most prominent UK diving educators have joined the RAID Team. Paul Haynes and Charles Hawkes have joined the training agency as RAID Instructor Trainers.

Paul and Charles need no introduction to the dive world and their respective resumes read like an encyclopaedia of diving.

Paul first dived in 1989 while serving as a Royal Marine Commando and quickly developed a passion for sports diving.  A Director of Haynes Marine (www.haynesmarine.com), a specialist diving consultancy, Paul has a strong background in sport, occupational and military diving, and is an enormously experienced Technical diver.

Known for his North Sea deep shipwreck exploration, amongst his other credentials, Paul holds several rebreather instructor trainer qualifications with BSAC and PSAI. He has worked on many diving expeditions, including on behalf of the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) the race to recover the ships bell from H.M.S. Prince of Wales, which was sunk in a depth of 75 meters / 225 feet in the South China Sea during WWII. Consequently Paul is a well sought after international speaker and because of his outstanding reputation within the Technical diving community and interpersonal skills, he will deliver an exceptional level of technical instructor development training for RAID.

Charles first started diving in 1976 in Fiji. He became a PADI instructor in 1986 and a PADI Course Director in 1998. He is a DSAT Tec Rec instructor Trainer. He also holds qualifications with DAN, TDI, ANDI, BSAC and IANTD. Charles has extensive dive retail experience, having managed and owned a busy five star IDC centre in Scotland for a number of years before becoming a freelance Course Director.

More recently Charles has gained substantial experience working within the offshore and marine training industry, developing various training programmes and training systems including evaluating training techniques to include a variety of survival, marine, medical, radio and firefighting programmes.

Together Paul and Charles are proven people trainers with versatile skills in sales, marketing and communication. They bring unique training techniques to RAID’s growing online training platform and will work closely with RAID UK Directors James Rogers and Paul Toomer in educating divers and instructors to the RAID diver training system.

“The highly innovative approach to online learning and documentation management pioneered by RAID, combined with elevated diving standards, low carbon footprint and a comprehensive suite of training programmes offers divers and diving Instructors an exciting and progressively structured personal development path,” says Paul Haynes.  “As a consequence I am delighted to be asked to join the RAID technical training management team and feel privileged to be part of what I feel is the most exciting development in the sport diving industry for a generation”.

“In the world of global training and instruction, more and more industries are choosing computer based training systems for their in house and remote training programs,” says Charles Hawkes. “It is refreshing to see the way Raid have collaborated with industry experts to produce their suite of outstanding diver programmes. I’m looking forward to helping them roll out their refreshing ideas and concepts.”

RAID International CEO Jim Holliday says, “We’re not going to brag about the achievements we’ve made at RAID in such a very short time since our relaunch earlier this year. We just want people to consider us as a serious alternative to other training agencies by taking a look at the quality of instructors, stores and diving personalities that have come on board since our relaunch. These highly creditable dive industry personalities know we have something special and I would like to personally add my congratulations and welcome Paul and Charles to our team”.

For more information about RAID, visit www.diveraid.com.