Some of you may be aware that one of our Directors, Richard Cook, has been away from TMS since August last year due to his two year old daughter having been diagnosed with a brain tumour. In light of this, Richard and Jess (his sister and fellow Director) are doing some fundraising for an amazing cause. Both Richard and Jess are taking part in a sponsored haircut and beard shave! Richard will be shaving his hair and beard and Jess will be cutting off around 40 cms of her lovely long hair.

Below is a personal message from Richard:

In the following days and weeks our daughter needed three brain surgeries, one of which was to remove the tumour. The surgery lasted for over 10 hours.

A week or so after the removal of the tumour we found out it was cancerous and that we would need a specialist type of radiation called Proton Beam Therapy, followed by a course of chemotherapy. Currently the NHS can only carry out Proton Beam Therapy in two places in the UK, so we were sent to Manchester for a six and a half week course of treatment. This meant moving our lives to Manchester and attending the Proton Beam Centre at The Christie Hospital, five times a week, where our daughter would have general anaesthetic each day.

In January of this year Pippa started chemotherapy treatment back at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. We are approaching the end of her treatment and routine scans so far have shown no signs that the tumour has returned, which we are all beyond happy about”.

We are pleased to have held another Samaritans’ Brew Monday event in support of our Director, Richard Cook , who volunteers at the Solihull Samaritans’ Branch. This was in aid of getting rid of the ‘Blue Monday’ stigma, where the the third Monday of January is considered to be the most depressing time of the year. We instead filled our time with a challenging and fun quiz, alongside a yummy buffet! We had supporters around the Business Innovation Centre (BIC)  such as the people of TalentTech Recruitment and Reciteworks.com by 4cite Labs.

This year we had strong contenders for our bake-off style competition ranging from tiffin’s to vegan chocolate cakes and there was even a prize for the best one! This year we opened the competition for everyone around the BIC to give Lorna, the reigning champion, more competitors! Lyndsey from TalentTech was tasked with a difficult job to taste all the cakes and decide a winner…the results are as follows…

Other winners from the raffle and the guess the chocolate in the jar were:

Raffle:

Bottle of Prosecco – Steve Barnard (TMS)

Sparkling Roose – Lorna Styring (TMS)

Guiness – Hammy Aulak (TMS)

Baileys – Lyndsey Hulm (TalentTech)

Guess the Chocolate Balls in the Jar:

145 – Steve Barnard (TMS)

Hosted at Darley Moor Airfield and Road Race Circuit, the venue itself holds significance. Situated on a high plateau adjacent to the A515, two miles south of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, the airfield operates under Airways Airsports, providing training in a wide range of leisure flying activities. Originally a Second World War runway, it has transformed into Darley Moor Racetrack, primarily catering to motorcycle races and track days under the management of Darley Moor Motor Cycle Road Race Club.

These valuable insights gained during the Crash Day reinforce our commitment at TMS to prevent and mitigate the severity of collisions through our Road Safety Audit and Safety Engineering work. By witnessing the staged crashes, including collisions with traditional lamp posts, passively safe structures, head-on vehicular crashes, high-speed rear-end shunts and side impacts, our engineers observed the significant damage sustained even at moderate speeds.

Particularly impactful were the rear-end shunts, which completely demolished the rear seating area of a car, and the side impact that caused an ambulance to overturn and roll when struck by a large car travelling at high speed.