Meet The Team – Tom Durham

Our meet the team series – Tom Durham

Tom’s start in the first aid industry is a fairly familiar story. Particularly of those specialising in outdoor first aid.

Tom had spent a decade working overseas – teaching a variety of watersports and mountain biking around the Mediterranean, and spending winters in the Alps. He then returned to Scotland in 2006 and set up his company Collective Training.

Being a highly qualified and experienced instructor, and with much real life first aid experience; supplementing his outdoor qualifications with first aid training was a logical choice.

He quickly developed a reputation for high quality outdoor first aid courses, particularly tailored to outdoor sports instructors and coaches.  Working across Scotland, Collective Training grew quite quickly.

Fast forward to 2015, many thousands of clients later, and Tom founded the First Aid Training Co-operative with Cory Jones.  (Find out why in this video!)

Alongside Collective Training, Tom has also developed another business – Collective Trax, which is a mountain bike trail design consultancy.

Through this business he is responsible for many of Scotland’s recent mountain bike facilities and carries out large scale feasibility studies and facility concept developments.  Such as the well publicised Gravitate North East project in Aberdeenshire.

Merging his professional experience also leads him to act as Safety Officer for Muckmedden Events, who organise many of Scotlands best loved mountain bike races.

At these, Tom is responsible for trail development for racing, risk assessing and emergency action planning.  As well working with the contracted medics to ensure the safety of all participants and spectators.

Tom moved back to the Italian Alps with his family in 2018.  Where as well as running both businesses, he also works through the summer months with Aosta Valley Freeride – guiding groups of mountain bikers from across the world around the high mountains of the Aosta Valley.

He’s also working on trail development and first aid courses across the Alps, and makes time for as much skiing as possible through the winter!