Professional Diving Academy Information

The Professional Diving Academy was established in 2004 in response to an apparent shortfall in basic working skills of many of the new divers entering the industry at that time. As the sister company to Shearwater Marine Services, one of the UK’s largest ADC registered marine construction diving contractors, the PDA has an excellent pedigree within the diving industry. Quite simply we have an inherent understanding of the skills that new divers require in order to be successful in a highly demanding and highly skilled subsea working environment. From the very outset our diver training courses were developed to teach the HSE’s excellent training syllabus within a real life working environment. In 2010 we took this a step further by introducing the construction and inspection diver awards that are included within our Premier Career Package. In addition to our self-propelled training vessel the MV Sleat, the PDA uses a variety of dive sites, piers, breakwaters, workboats and barges to ensure that our delegates are used to adjusting to various depths, and different seabed and structural conditions that are faced by most working divers. At these independent dive sites you will not only develop essential diving skills but can also learn to use subsea tools and inspection equipment in a realistic working context. Inspecting the cathodic protection on steel Larsen sheet piling or cutting and removing timber debris from a wooden pier using a hydraulic chainsaw are just some examples of the type of the skills you will learn.