BIFAlink November 2024

BIFA News

OBITUARY: Colin Joyce, Stansted Training Services

June 1946 – October 2024 Many employees of BIFA Members will remember attending training courses at BIFA delivered by the highly knowledgeable Colin Joyce. The secretariat team was saddened to hear from his family advising of his sudden passing last month. Colin assisted BIFA for many years in the areas of training and Customs policy through his involvement with the BIFA Training Working Group (now defunct) and the BIFA Customs Policy Group. He wrote and delivered training courses in: Freight forwarding, Customs procedures, aviation security, soft skills – customer service, train the trainer, etc. He wrote the original course material for the BTEC Intermediate Award in Multimodal International Freight

Procedures and BTEC Intermediate Award in Customs Export & Import Procedures – training courses that are still delivered to this day. In recognition of his service to BIFA and the industry, Colin was recognised with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the BIFA Freight Service Awards ceremony in January 2018. Industry contribution Ian Moran, EV Cargo, also sat on the Training Working Group and had the following words to say: “Colin must have trained countless people over the years and consequently made a significant contribution to the professional standards of our industry. “He was a good trainer and engaged well with those he was training and his knowledge of

the industry was exceptional. He was a positive character who looked forward and it was always a pleasant experience having a catch up with Colin. I would most certainly place Colin in the top ten people who have had a beneficial impact on our profession during the last 40 years.” Very informative Bob Vernon worked alongside Colin in the delivery of training courses and recalled: “His training programmes were easy to follow, easy to present, and very informative. Training materials were supplied to me neatly organised and held together with dozens of paperclips! “I accumulated enough elastic bands to make balls out of them bigger than tennis balls. He was never late for meetings and usually early. A very chatty and friendly man who always treated everyone with respect.” Sharon Hammond, BIFA events executive, first met Colin while employed by MSAS and shared her memories: “Colin had been employed by Walford Meadows before

various companies came together to form MSAS, at which time Colin decided to set up Stansted Training Services and began writing and delivering various freight and Customs-related training courses for many freight forwarders. “During my time at MSAS he delivered freight and Customs training, customer services, train-the-trainer and aviation security courses. When I joined BIFA in 1999, Colin was already delivering a number of one- day courses and then wrote the original programmes for the BTEC courses that we still deliver to this day. At this time I worked closely with Colin on course scheduling and assessment of learners. “Colin overcame profound deafness to run a successful training business and later in life underwent a cochlear implant and was active in supporting others as they prepared for and got to grips with their own implants. “He was also a part-time farmer, maintaining his parents’ farm for many years, on which he grew barley that he told me was sold for beer production.”

 

 











8 | November 2024

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