I'm competent!

[LiamPope]

Woo hoo! Just thought I'd share the joy.

I finally have it in writing that my LABC will allow me to issue my own EIC for my DIY rewire (on my renovation building notice). They just require a copy of my leccy engineering degree cert.

So a DIY full rewire soon to be the subject of a shiny completion cert.

 

[ericmark]

Local Authority Building Control inspectors are lazy and seem to be willing to issue completion certificates without the care they should exercise.

The phrase Competent person. A person who possesses sufficient technical knowledge, relevant practical skills and experience for the nature of the electrical work undertaken and is able at all times to prevent danger and, where appropriate, injury to him/herself and others may describe you.

However that does not make you a member of a competent persons scheme and I think the use of phrase "competent persons scheme" is very misleading.

Having both a degree in Electrical and Electronics engineering and having worked for many years as an electrician holding C&G 2391 and 2382 I realise the things taught to get a degree do not really help in complying with regulations.

However our LABC also seemed to think it did and questioned the idea of my son with a 2391 signing the installation certificate but were willing to allow me to sign it since I had a degree. They were unaware I also had a 2391. And it does worry me that LABC's don't seem to know what one has to know in order to pass the exams.

As to insurance I often wonder who would be considered responsible? The LABC as they issued the completion certificate or the person signing the installation certificate. Personally considering the LABC charges then the buck should stop with them but I would think they would find some way to shift the blame to you should anything go wrong.

 

[1john]

Eric, I expect the LABC have an excellent disclaimer, anyway, they are now relying on liampope in this instance to sign a document stating that his installation fully complies with BS7671, and to be honest, if you havent worked with the regs or say the city and guilds exam, that could be a little difficult to prove if ever required.

Sometimes I wonder why people are so hell bent on DIYing stuff when they can have the peace of mind of a qualified, experienced, insured and competent electrician doing the work, correctly testing it for compliance and issuing an installation cert that will keep any insurance company happy and leave the home owner safe from taking blame.

To the OP, this is all a generalisation, not strictly or even necessarily aimed at you. You may well be competent, I would however be questioning with the LABC where the blame lies should something happen. I wonder if they can disclose their guidelines for accertaining competence to you?

 

[Johnmelad502]

Sometimes I wonder why people are so hell bent on DIYing stuff when they can have the peace of mind of a qualified, experienced, insured and competent electrician

It's often down to costs!

 

[ericmark]

Cost is of course one of the main reasons to DIY. A professional at any trade has to do things to a price. And as a result some times the DIY job is better quality than the professional. However the professional has two advantages over the DIY'er.
1) Knowlage
2) Tools
Although knowledge can be gained by the DIY'er many of the tools used by the professional are expensive and there is a tendency to try and manage without.
Using items like a socket box sinker or wall chaser allow the professional to do a quicker and neater job than the DIY'er but are not really essential. However the inspection and testing tools are something which can't really be done without. There are cheap plug in testers that do test loop impedance, RCD, polarity but these cheap testers only have an array of LED indicators and are not really a substitute for a proper test set.
Even to hire a test set is expensive but with a complete house rewire the £750 for test set and £250 for LABC fees will likely means the total cost of full rewire will be marginally cheaper than getting a professional to do the work. It is after all very labour intensive.
However with smaller jobs in the main to do them correctly will cost more than getting a professional to do the work.
So where cost is the reason to DIY in the main it means sub-standard work. With no or little testing and a disregard for regulations. As a result one should expect to find problems with any work directly registered with the LABC under Part P. Although there will be electricians trying to start up as sole traders who's work may be A1 as it will be submitted to some scheme latter for membership in the main I would think the LABC would come across some real horrors.
The electrician can be more of a problem as I am sure most of us can guess a set of readings to enter on an installation certificate which anyone viewing it would have a hard time seeing it was no genuine.
However when the house is sold the buyer looks at the pack of completion certificates and thinks all is well with the electrics in the house.
This means the whole idea of Part P has become a farce and is hiding many sins.
Insurance is another problem and my son was self employed in true sense for a time and then started to work for other companies but under the self employed status as in the main he earned more that way than cards in. He therefore kept up his insurance payments but found many working with him on the same jobs had no insurance and this included Part P work and the umbrella company was able to submit the installation certificates and produce completion certificates from their scheme provider without a problem even though all the work was sub-contracted. As to if the umbrella companies insurance would have covered we don't know.
We have though now got to consider Part P as a failure because of the way it has been implemented and really it is just a DIY tax and has very little to do with electrical safety. And reports like we see in this post only serve to reinforce this view.

 

[LiamPope]

At the time of submitting my building notice (not just including the electrical work) I was intending to follow the path described in Doc P of notification followed by the LABC inspecting and testing. At the time I naively assumed that would be fine, and it was only later I discovered my LABC were one of those refusing to test notified work, and were demanding I get a registered spark to do a PIR in order to get my completion cert. I wasn't going to accept this bullying on pure principle, and in fact my very first posts on here were gathering advice on this matter. They never budged so that is why I decided to pursue the alternative path described in Doc P of a non registered but competent person notifying and submitting a BS7671 EIC. I have use of a calibrated Megger MFT and always intended to test myself anyway, even if my completion cert ultimately came from LABC contracted testing or a third party PIR. Would have been interesting to compare results.

So it was just a matter of getting the LABC to accept me as 'competent'. I'll be the first to admit my degree is probably the least relevant on the list of things that have contributed to my actual ability to do the work, which includes various professional experience, book work, this forum's search function , and the general practical competence and ability to self-teach that has also enabled me to do the plumbing, tiling, structural changes, window installation, dry-lining, etc. However, as I suspected, as far as the LABC are concerned, bits of paper tick boxes, and playing the degree card was what got them to agree to accept my EIC. Well if they're happy, I'm happy. And if an EIC and completion cert exists for the work, my house insurers and potential future buyer's solicitors are also happy.

1john - no disrespect at all to pro sparks, but I couldn't possibly have any greater peace of mind than I have currently - knowing where and how every cable in my property is installed, knowing every circuit is properly designed, and knowing I don't have a page of made up test results. Having saved a few grand is nice too. I'm 100% happy to sign the declarations on the EIC that the installation complies. I dont think I'll ever have to prove it does - rather someone may want to try to prove it doesn't. They will struggle though, as it does.

Oh well - I didn't exactly expect a pat on the back . I fully accept that when the pros on here make generalised statements along the lines of 'most DIY electrical work is sub-standard', they are completely true. The minority of DIYers who do work to a professional standard, BAS and a few others on here that I know of, for example, I suppose will never avoid being tarred with the same brush.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Sometimes I wonder why people are so hell bent on DIYing stuff when they can have the peace of mind of a qualified, experienced, insured and competent electrician

It's often down to costs!

1. For enjoyment. Man is a tool-using animal, and there is a great deal of satisfaction to be gained from working with one’s hands to create something, and being able to stand back and say "I did that", particularly for people whose job isn't like that. Gardening is the classic example of this - it would be a bit odd for someone to make continually rewiring their house or changing the wallpaper a hobby, but gardening is something that millions of people do for pleasure, and spend a lot of time doing it. But it is a form of DIY - they could always get a gardener to do it for them, and have the same end result to admire, but they choose to DIY because they enjoy it.
   
2. To save money. Pretty self evident.
   
3. To get a better job done. I’m not claiming that all DIYers will always do a better job than any professional, that would be ludicrous, as anybody who’d ever seen my bricklaying would be quick to point out. But there are times when a DIYer will achieve better results because of the amount of time they can lavish on a job. It’s often related to #2 - time is money, and there will be instances where someone for whom that is not true can do a better job than someone for whom it is. Take painting for example. The amount of work involved in, say, preparing a wooden window for repainting, particularly if it’s got lots of small panes, and decorative mouldings is huge. Nobody could make an economic proposition based around charging for doing it if they were truly going to do it as thoroughly as possible.
   
4. Convenience. There are times when the best way to get a job done is the 8AM start, bish-bosh all day long approach of the pro, and there are times when that level of disruption is unwelcome. Decorating is one example – DIYing at evenings and weekends will for sure take longer, but it will also be a lot less intrusive and disruptive to daily routine.