Dino Capocci
I was brought up in Tottenham and educated at St Francis de Sales primary and St Ignatius Grammar Schools. This was followed by completing a BSc in Chemical Engineering at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.
My first job was in South Africa, being trained on gold and diamond extraction at mines in the Transvaal and in Namibia. Realizing that I would end up working in remote locations where mining is carried out, I changed course and took a job in an oil refinery in Cape Town. This was a technical services role, checking how the various refinery units were operating and making recommendations for improvements.
I moved back to London and started in engineering design in the oil industry. I worked on several projects for offshore platforms and for onshore plants that would be built for the North Sea and the Middle east and Africa. This was followed by 3 years working on the construction of a new oil refinery in Muscat, Oman. After that, I continued in construction for some sulphuric acid plants in Morocco.
Back in Europe, I worked in London, Paris, Aberdeen, The Hague and Rotterdam, then Houston and Lima, on a variety of oil industry design projects over several years. I worked in a huge gas construction project in Iran before going back into project design in Europe.
My career progressed from being a process design engineer, to project engineer, engineering manager and project manager. My final project was for an oilfield expansion project in Abu Dhabi. This started in London and I then moved to Abu Dhabi to take the project through to the award of construction contracts.
While my knowledge of education is limited, I do have experience of budget control and of staff management.
I see my value as a Governor of St Teresa’s as being able to give an alternative view and try to provide ideas that may help the Head and Governing Board. Where there are technical issues concerning the school infrastructure, I am sometimes able to give a more technical assistance.
