Committee Profiles – South West & South Wales Region
Committee Profiles
Pete Prater was appointed Chair of the Region in March 2007. Previously he has served BAPCO since 1994 as Secretary to the Region and Secretary and Chair to the Association’s Commercial Advisory Group. For his services to BAPCO he was awarded Life Membership in 2005. Peter served in the Royal Corps of Signals for 15 years before becoming an independent technical and management consultant in 1996 since when he has worked on a variety of emergency service telecommunications related projects. Peter joined Frequentis UK in April 2009 as Key Account Manager with specific responsibility for the Metropolitan Police Service relationship.
Richard Claridge. Richard has been in the ambulance service for over thirty years. He has undertaken a range of roles from Paramedic advising for BBC Casualty, ambulance training, control management and leading the project to relocate the Wiltshire Ambulance Service Control room into a shared facility with Fire and Police as part of the Invest to Save initiative. Richard is now working for the Dept. of Health Ambulance Radio Programme as a Regional Service Manager. Richard joined the Regional committee in April 2007 and is adding value through enthusiasm, commitment and his significant awareness of the UK ambulance service.
Keith Phillips OBE. An original founder and Life Member of BAPCO, Keith entered the Fire Service in Gloucestershire in 1963, transferred to Avon in 1974 and to West Sussex as the brigade’s Communications and Computing Services Officer in 1979 where he led a new control room project and introduced operational and admin’ support IT to the brigade. Joining the Home Office in 1985, he took the lead on fire service related communications and control room issues, he was appointed as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Fire Services in 1989. Since then he provided a pivotal role in a number of areas, including as Project Director of the Firelink Radio Project and whilst with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, as Programme Director of the New Dimension (Counter Terrorism) Resilience Programme. During this period he also delivered the Fire Control Regionalisation plan to ministers and was appointed as an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2004. Keith retired from his role in Whitehall at the end of 2004 when he entered the world of consultancy, finally retiring in 2007 to coincide with a move to his new home in Devon. Keith joined the committee in January 2008.
Jason Somerville. Jason left Southampton Institute of Higher Education in 1990 after 4 years of study, to graduate with an HND in Electronics and Communications Engineering, and subsequently joined Philips Telecom initially as a workshop based mobile radio / PMR engineer, and progressed to field / systems engineer. He has experience on a vast range of PMR / analogue microwave / paging / Trunked radio and telecommunications systems. Jason left the industry formally in 1995 and joined Hampshire Ambulance Service, where he experienced operational service as a Technician, Paramedic and Emergency Care Practitioner, along with other roles which included Ambulance Clinical Tutor, Patient Transport Services Manager and Clinical Developments Manager. Jason has recently been appointed by South Central Ambulance Service as the Lead Radio Network / ARP Project Manager, with the purpose to support and maintain the functionality of the legacy radio systems and to manage the transition from legacy VHF to digital communication provision using the Airwave Service. Jason joined the Regional Committee in November 2007.
Jeremy Habberley. Jeremy joined BAPCO in 2006 and has been a member of the South West and South Wales Regional committee since 2010. He has worked for Sepura PLC for the past 5 years, supplying TETRA radio terminals for the Airwave network to the UK’s police forces and ambulance trusts, with specific responsibility for the South West and Southern Wales area. Prior to joining Sepura, he was Sales Director for i2 Mobile Solutions supplying mobile data systems into both the private and public sectors.
Graham Weeks. Graham joined BAPCO in 1995 and has been a member of the South West Regional committee for a number of years. He has 32 years of Sales & Marketing experience within the Communications industry having dealt with various sectors including Law Enforcement, Government, Defence, Security, and Network Telecoms. He has worked for a number of blue chip companies including Racal, Motorola, Allen, Andrew and Cobham covering territories in the UK, Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. He is currently Regional Sales Manager with Cobham Antennas, a division of Cobham plc.
Phil Jefferson. Phil joined BAPCO in 2004 and has been a South West & South Wales committee member for the past 3 years. Phil has 14 years Sales & Marketing experience working across both private and public sector. Following an early sales career in blue chip FMCG corporations, he moved to SunGard Public Sector in 2004 and has worked with all the Public Safety organisations in the UK on a wide range of projects and solutions. Phil is currently Head of Outsourcing & Managed Services at SunGard.
