Inside the Secretariat

Meet Bill Chilton, Technical Adviser – Diving

When did you join IMCA? 
November 2021

What do you do within IMCA? 
I’m a Diving Technical Adviser – assisting our members around the globe with diving related issues and trying to make the commercial diving industry safer for all.

What do you do in your spare time? 
I train several times a week with a very talented group of individuals at a taekwon-do club in my hometown of Ellon, Aberdeenshire.  I was recently awarded my first degree black belt and decided to enter my first world championship competition earlier in the year. I was competing in the veterans’ division (+35 years old – despite being 50 next year!) in four events; sparring (+90kg weight division – no sniggering at the back please), patterns, power (breaking boards) and special technique (high jumping kick).  I won gold in them all apart from patterns – where I took the silver.  These results meant I awarded the title: Overall World Champion 2022 (Black Belt, Veteran Division)

What’s the best thing about working for IMCA? 
Having the reach and tools to make diving safer on a global scale.  I spent 12 years with the UK’s Health and Safety Executive improving diver safety in the North Sea and to be given the chance take this to the next level is particularly exciting.

What’s the biggest change you have seen in IMCA since you joined? 
I’m relatively new to the organisation, so not best placed to answer this…ermm, the new offices are lovely aren’t they?

What did you want to be when you were growing up? 
A deep sea diver.  I grew up in Aberdeen surrounded by the offshore subsea industry – I can remember seeing the DSV Rocky 1 in Aberdeen harbour when I was a child and thinking it was the coolest ship I had ever seen.  My father was involved in ROVs from the very beginning, there we always part of manipulators or cameras lying around the house.  Becoming a commercial diver was my act of youthful rebellion. Stuntman was a close second.

Who’s your hero? 
Although I’ve been recently successful at taekwon-do competitions it wasn’t always so. My mental health suffered massively from imposter syndrome and pre-tournament nerves to the detriment of my performance.  Reading Mathew Pinsent’s autobiography where he describes these exact feelings and how sometimes he would try and deal with them by either making deals with the deity of rowing (‘I’ll take a silver now, just make it so I don’t have to compete’), or wishing for an intervention to take the stress away (‘maybe our minibus will get a flat tyre and I’ll miss the event’), made me realise that athletes at the highest level feel like this, that there’s no magic switch that can be flicked.  I think that anyone that has the courage to speak openly about their mental health should be lauded.

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