In the summer of 2025, IACS acquired Hydrogen Safe, and this training specialist that delivers courses, qualifications and e-modules in Hydrogen safety joined our family. With this came a new role for James Baker.
James continues as Operations Manager. Not only does he lead on IACS training & Education, but Hydrogen Safe too.
With a background in education and experience from bringing Hydrogen training into the curriculum for the IACS ‘Practitioner in Pipelines for Hydrogen and Utilities’ (PIPHU) apprenticeship, James has a great deal to bring to the Hydrogen Safe business.
Here, he talks about the synergies between IACS and Hydrogen Safe and why it’s all about the people.
1. How will you be supporting Hydrogen Safe in your new role?
A key part of my role is integration, bringing the Hydrogen Safe team into the IACS family.
It is really important that Hydrogen Safe feel that they are part of something bigger and are part of the larger IACS Group. As they are based in Manchester, it has become a second home as our apprenticeship has evolved, and I’m pleased to say that I will be spending more time travelling up North, offering my support as and when it is required.
2. What are you looking forward to the most about working with the Hydrogen Safe team?
Working with a hungry, knowledgeable team in a burgeoning industry.
Each colleague at Hydrogen Safe is highly professional and has a real passion for training and passing on their knowledge to others. They are a great team to work with, and just as I am supporting them, they are supporting me too!
I am certainly looking forward to developing my hydrogen knowledge with their help!
3. You have managed a language school in the heart of London. Will this experience support your new role with Hydrogen Safe, and if so, how?
Yes, I believe my previous experience will help support my role within Hydrogen Safe. We taught English to students from all over the world. The students were paying to receive the best tuition to improve their English skills and the best possible experience whilst living in London.
My job was to facilitate this, ensuring our teacher’s ability met the expectations of our students and our academic team and ensuring the school provided the best accommodation, social and pastoral care to all our students. The customer experience was hugely important to me as a School Director, and the customer experience will be a cornerstone of all we do at Hydrogen Safe, whilst ensuring the team develops and continues to enhance their skills as trainers.
4. Hydrogen Safe is only part of your existing role. What synergies are there between IACS and the Hydrogen Safe business?
The best part of my job is the people. I love working with people to help them develop and improve. I am proud of the apprenticeship scheme we have established with IACS and the number of apprentices we have trained who are now in full-time employment with our business.
It has not gone without hiccups, but it has been a learning curve which has helped us to enhance and improve our apprenticeship scheme.
Hydrogen Safe is still a relatively young company. Despite this, it has evolved so much in a short space of time and will continue to as we move forward into the exciting hydrogen training market.
5. IACS T&E is integral to your role. What are your key take aways from the last few years, which have seen you support its launch, while also establishing and running successful training initiatives such as PIPHU and the veterans?
- It is important to be pro-active but be prepared to adapt!
- Never expect the status quo.
- Demand changes, people’s motivations change, and industry changes.
- You never stop learning. It is important to learn lessons from past experiences.
6. Hydrogen is very high on the agenda. How are developments in this area impacting your role?
I see hydrogen as a huge part of the energy future of this country and world-wide.
IACS has been very interested in the development of the science and what hydrogen could do to the infrastructure of the UK for a number of years now. It has not directly impacted our inspectors on site yet, but we hope to be involved with some of the pioneering pipelines planned for the UK in the future.
We have several inspectors trained in hydrogen safety already and hope to increase this in the coming years. My role is to ensure that we have the inspectors ready and hydrogen safe if they are required to work on these pipelines.
7. People are at the heart of your role. Why do you love this aspect of business so much?
People interest me. The way people are, how they work and how they react to certain things fascinates me.
I have always enjoyed helping people. When working in larger companies, I have seen managers react negatively when a member of their team has been promoted to another department within the organisation. I could never understand that. I would always be disappointed to lose a member of my team, but I always saw it as an acknowledgement of the skills and environment I had helped to create to enable that employee to flourish and be noticed by others in the company. I saw it as a vindication of what we were doing and a compliment.
This is what gives me a buzz.
8. Do you have a quote and words of wisdom that support the importance of placing people, skills and learning at the heart of an organisation?
People make a business. Give them the skills, trust, empowerment, and an environment they can thrive in, and you will create a success.