Customer and certification

What would happen if customer had part p elec (also NICEIC registered) rewiring his house and after first fix elec went AWOL (maybe good reason such as illness).

Customer would be left with an installation that could not be certified by another electrician from what I gather on here.

Would the customer have to start all over again at his expense?

Would help if associations such as NICEIC had contingencies for such things.

This question gets asked a lot on here and just makes me wonder what's happening in my trade.

If a competent electrician was genuinely taken ill half way through a job I feel sure his scheme would step in.

A 3 part EIC could be issued with the first spark signing for design and construction and second spark completing the work.

I just wonder why you ask have you had this happen?

This question, and variations of it, are asked a lot all over the place.

It is quite amazing how many electricians get sick/die/fall out with the builder/run way to join the circus/get abducted by aliens part way through a job, often when they've finished the actual installation work, and all that's left to do is to issue the certificate.

And for some reason there seem to be a lot more electricians who get sick/die/fall out with the builder/run way to join the circus/get abducted by aliens part way through a job since Jan 1st 2005....

Notwithstanding people trying to save a few $$, I think there are quite legitimate reasons too (falling out with Builders is not uncommon).

That said, I'm in a situation right now where I've done 1st fix on a property we are renovating, working directly under the supervision (he was coming to site to check off each circuit as it was run) of a someone who was then to do the 2nd fix, commission and then certify the install (and do the test) once done.

As I'm studing for 2381 this was a good arrangement as it allowed me to get additional hands-on experience (I actually work for an ISP on the techops side, so structured cabling and power issues are something that I have lots of exposure to every day, getting C&G was a logical thing to do).

The trouble is that this individual has just informed me that his company has made a policy decision to no longer allow this kind of informal arrangement.. which leaves me with a problem (although I know LBC quite well and they are are good, solution focused guys so I expect to be able to work it out with them)...

One piece of luck in this respect was that I decided to run everything in cable trays (I have allowed for grouping in my provisional calcs), which means that with the exception of the kitchen (plastered in but I have photos) and between the floor in the 1st and 2nd story bedrooms, everything else is visible and available for inspection..

Worst case, I can pull it all out, notify LBC officially and then re-run although I'm hoping that I won't have to.

Of course, I couldn't say that I wasn't also hoping to save $$ from the excercise, but it seemed to be a reasonable way to do it.. I just couldn't have planned for this company changing its mind as it did (although I understand why of course)... next time around, I hope to be able to be officially able to do it myself of course!

Did you use the electrician on an informal basis or was he actually working for his employer.

It sounds like he works for an employer, and it is that employer that is registered, not the individual electrician, hence their decision. It's not surprising as that informal arrangement was probably illegal - the OP, working under his supervision, is not an employee of the firm.

Had the electrician been personally registered, then the firm could not have stopped him, subject to any conditions of his employment concerning conflicts of interest, as long as he personally owned the test equipment and didn't do it in his employer's time. He would also have been strongly advised to have his own PII.

That's right, the company was registered, not the individuals (or at least not the guys doing 1st fix)..

As I understood it at the time (and I understand that I have been corrected now!), this wasn't illegal in itself providing the company had sufficient QC in place to make sure the work being done by their guys on their jobs was being done to spec and of an appropriate standard - after all they would be issuing a cert to that effect.

Doing it by proxy as I did of course is another matter.. although at the time it didn't seem to be at odds with what they were doing.. to be fair I knew much less about it then at the time and it was at his suggestion that we did it this way (for the reasons I explained)..

You just have to learn from these things I guess... in truth even if I have to pull the whole lot out, it has been very useful to get more hands-on experience with... 15 circuits though is going to take a while to put back in!

ban-all-sheds said:

This question, and variations of it, are asked a lot all over the place.

It is quite amazing how many electricians get sick/die/fall out with the builder/run way to join the circus/get abducted by aliens part way through a job, often when they've finished the actual installation work, and all that's left to do is to issue the certificate.

And for some reason there seem to be a lot more electricians who get sick/die/fall out with the builder/run way to join the circus/get abducted by aliens part way through a job since Jan 1st 2005....

Click to expand...

But that does seem to be tailing off slightly, curiously in tandem with more and more people asking "How exactly should XYZ be done? Not that I have any intention of doing it myself, but I just want to know everything that's involved before I start getting quotes from electricians".

Perhaps an X File of Alien Abduction should be undertaken to establish a link to part p.

"ET reads the Building Regs"

"This work will be checked and signed off by a Part P electrician"

Click to expand...

I've never met this electrician, but he must be really busy, he seems to be travelling all over the country

ban-all-sheds said:

It is quite amazing how many electricians get sick/die/fall out with the builder/run way to join the circus/....

Click to expand...

OOI, ex-Prime Minister John Major's father was an acrobat.

John was the first known case of a boy running away from the circus to become an accountant

benstoneham said:

One piece of luck in this respect was that I decided to run everything in cable trays (I have allowed for grouping in my provisional calcs), which means that with the exception of the kitchen (plastered in but I have photos) and between the floor in the 1st and 2nd story bedrooms, everything else is visible and available for inspection..

Click to expand...

Have you really run cables in a house on cable tray?