PDS Consulting was started in 1990 by Peter Kiddell and Carol Swift. Peter was Managing Director of one of the largest sub contract printing facilities in Europe and Carol was Technical Director.

Both came from an engineering background and felt they had all the necessary qualifications and knowledge to go out to advise and train people.

How wrong can you be?

"Yes, we were knowledgeable but in a very practical way. We soon realised that you couldn’t just say 'give that knob a tweak' we had to say how much and why. If someone asked why something happened you couldn’t reply 'because I say so'. We quickly realised we had to go back to basics. We had to learn all the theory about the processes so we could explain it to our clients and translate it into practical terms for them.

We have come a long way since then and now our knowledge of the theory matches our skills in the practical. We are now recognised as leaders in the fields of screen and pad printing.

Even though we have attained this high level of knowledge and skill, we do not rest on our laurels, for screen and pad printing are versatile processes and we continue to expand our knowledge and understanding." - Carol Swift

QUALIFICATIONS

Carol and Peter are both qualified trainers (TDLB Level 4) as well as holding the City and Guilds qualifications for Internal Assessment (D32/D33), Internal Verification (D34) and External Verifier (D35). Our staff members also hold the City and Guilds qualifications for Internal Assessment and Verification.

PDS assessors and trainers are allocated to clients based on their occupational competence in the clients industry sector. For example we would not allocate an assessor with occupational competence running large format multi colour presses, to a company printing glass cosmetic bottles, even though they both use the screen printing process.

PDS are unique in the printing industry as the companies who do offer some training in printing (normally machinery or consumable suppliers) do not hold any formal qualifications.