Building regulations Part P

[Anonymous]

Ike

My ONC included all of the modules for a city and guilds 232 industrial electricians qualification (not sure why I was put on this course!) - I studied an extra year to gain ONC.

I'm afraid I don't completely agree with your point. An electrician apprenticeship takes 4 years working with a skilled and experienced electrician and attending day or block release at a technical college for those 4 years.
The bit of paper reflects an awful lot of knowledge and experience that the average joe has no idea about.
Sure, joe average knows that the red or brown are live and the black or blue are neutral but the electrician will know all about the electical regulations and how to test an installation safely and correctly, how to bond according to the regs, how faults are likely to develop, how to rate and de-rate cables for different installations, how to terminate mineral insulated and armoured cables correctly, how to protect equipment and people and a host of other things.

I am not knocking you or anyone else, just saying that puting wires in is a small part of the job/knowledge.

The bit of paper only shows that at a specific point in time, one was able to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the craft. It doesn't prove that all electrical work will be 100 % safe

All skilled craftsmen undertake a lifetime's learning in their craft and I cannot agree with the above point. I have had countless industrial electricians working for me in various companies and they all took pride in their knowledge and job. I have no direct experience of domestic electricians though

My point is that someone with a technical/professional background, and a reasonable amount of commonsense can be perfectly capable of safe electrical work

Common sense does not even come into it. What you or anyone else considers safe does not come into it.
All Electrical installations MUST comply with the IEE wiring regulations, currently 17th edition - failure will lead to prosecution and possibly criminal charges should someone be injured by a person's (skilled or not) work.

My final point is that in the last 24 years I have seen such electrical abominations that you would not believe - not in industrial buildings where skilled professional are employed but in peoples houses.

 

[Anonymous]

What constitutes a "competent person" in terms of this act? I could not find any definition on the gov website.
John

A competent person is one who is both qualified in the discipline and certified by the Institue of Electrical Engineers (IEE)

So, a time-served electrician (with city and guilds craft electrical course studied), an electrical technician (ONC, HNC, HND in electrical engineering or related), an electrical engineer (electrical engineering degree and possibly chartered) or anyone of similar background, i.e. having studied and practiced electrical engineering principles and knowledgeable about the electrical regulations.

Electrical engineering is a higly theoretical area - not just wires and plugs :wink:

 

[Vormulac]

What constitutes a "competent person" in terms of this act? I could not find any definition on the gov website.
John

Asking the government to define a competant person is like asking a blind man to describe paisley. One simply has no concept of the other.

:wink:

V.

 

[Anonymous]

What constitutes a "competent person" in terms of this act? I could not find any definition on the gov website.
John

Asking the government to define a competant person is like asking a blind man to describe paisley. One simply has no concept of the other.

:wink:

V.

See above :wink:

 

[ike]

An electrician apprenticeship takes 4 years working with a skilled and experienced electrician and attending day or block release at a technical college for those 4 years.
The bit of paper reflects an awful lot of knowledge and experience that the average joe has no idea about.
Sure, joe average knows that the red or brown are live and the black or blue are neutral but the electrician will know all about the electical regulations and how to test an installation safely and correctly, how to bond according to the regs, how faults are likely to develop, how to rate and de-rate cables for different installations, how to terminate mineral insulated and armoured cables correctly, how to protect equipment and people and a host of other things.

I am not knocking you or anyone else, just saying that puting wires in is a small part of the job/knowledge.

What...and you think I don't realise any of that ? I'm not knocking your point of view. I've been through the same system with countless others - a different discipline granted. but pleassse give us mechanical engineers a little more credit. :wink:

cheers

Ike

 

[Anonymous]

but pleassse give us mechanical engineers a little more credit. :wink:

cheers

Ike

All credit given. :wink: I am a lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering department :lol: (Instrumentaion and control of dynamic systems)

 

[Anonymous]

Interesting arguments going on here about what constitutes a competent electrician.

Just to bring this back to the original article for a moment. From the governments own mouth this Part P fiasco is designed literally to combat the loss of life involving electrical fatalities.

So it must be a big problem then with all those lives being lost.

From the governments own investigatory papers and also backed up from data freely available from the RoSPA web site, the number of lives lost each year from electrical fatalities which Part P could have an effect on is 4-6.

Now it is my view that these darwin-enabled species might just continue to pass away, and quite possibly in even greater numbers. Why? Because instead of people like me able to provide services costing not very much the customer will obtain quotes from competent electricians of probably 10x that amount - and so decide to do the work themselves without employing anyone.

End result: A few more sizzling bodies on the end of a piece of T&E.

Now just consider for a minute, if government spent all the money they are wasting on Part P (including mounting a radio advertising campaign in the coming weeks, bill board posters, you name it), how's about they used that money to buy a cat scan or 3 for hospitals etc? How many more lives might they be able to save - repeatedly - if they stopped fannying around trying to protect Joe Public from doing electrical work?

Andrew

 

[Midnight]

c'mon Tony... when last did ya see a sparkie working some pyro... or use a megger for that matter...??? BTW.. we're onto the 18th edition now

I spent a couple of hours reading the regs last night... and for the most part, all I could see was a bunch of exemptions.. honestly.. I checked and triple checked to make damn sure it wasn't the meds messin with my head (it was late.....honest)... there's tons of work that ya could do that doesn't need notification...

The overall impression I got was that they want a C of C for the work done... I reckon if they failed to classify any and all properly qualified sparkies / engineers as competent personnel, there'd be a riot of biblical proportions..

I wonder how this affects their efforts to import tradesmen from foreign parts to make up for the lack of apprenticeships these past 25 years..???

 

[Vormulac]

Oh, there'll be an exemption for that, don't you worry...

V.

 

[Anonymous]

c'mon Tony... when last did ya see a sparkie working some pyro... or use a megger for that matter...??? BTW.. we're onto the 18th edition now

Hi Mike
Last time for pyro was a couple of years ago (fire alarm circuit), megger 1 month ago!!

As for the wiring regs there is NO 18th edition of the regs!

Who says so? The IEE says so - I phoned and asked them not 10 minutes ago as I had not heard of 18th edition and as a member was a little concerned when I read your post - why wasn't I told kind of concerned :shock: .

The Current edition is the 16th (2001) with a brown cover which includes amendments 1 and 2 (not included in the blue cover version but avaialble online)

 

[Les Mahon]

An interesting topic this. I don't know what it's like in england 9moved home to ireland 8 years ago) but here the electricity suply board will not replace your meter and main fuse if the "tails" from the conumer unit are not certified by a certified electrician - To be a certified electrician you need to be part of the professional body, created and regualted by the electricans themselves!

I think self regulation is a good thing, in line with pevious posts the governement don't have the competancy to do it, but it worries my slightly that it could be open to abuse.

For myself, I completly re-wired my own house this year - The wiring that was in it when we bought it was original and completly knackered. Now the only thing I'm unhappy about in the whole thing is the connections from the main fuse, two dodgy looking pieces of 2.5mm cable!

 

[Anonymous]

I think self regulation is a good thing

It would have been very simple to provide self-regulation, without incurring the red tape of having to join a government quango costing hundreds of pounds per year.

The law should have been changed to require anyone doing electrical work making sure it was done to 16th edition standard. Presently (and historically) those standards are advisory only. You can ignore them and you aren't committing an offence.

Instead we've invented a system whereby qualified and experienced electricians are not to be trusted, and need a mother hen to go out and inspect their work on a frequent basis to ensure that it's up to standard.

To put this into perspective, how would it go down if you passed your driving test and then government issued a new law requiring you to have an examiner drop in to make sure you were still driving okay years later?

Part P is about you not being able to drive on the road unless you belong to the AA or RAC.....several times over.

Andrew

 

[Anonymous]

And you can expect your council tax bills to go up too. In order for local authorities to police this system they will have to employ more administrators at the local office, even if the certification work is subcontracted out.

Andrew

 

[norman]

This is not really that new - just an extension of what has been in place in industry for years

The bottom line for years has been that the last person to work on a dangerous electrical installation is responsible for it being dangerous whether they actually carried out the work or not. The reasoning behind this is that anybody who carries out maintenance or retro-fit work has to be qualified and so should recognise and make good any defective installation/equipment.


]Hi all

I don`t know to much about this subject, but my reading is that if you wanted to save a few £££ you could do a GOOD rewire job leaving one socket run to be fitted by a qualified man who then has to test the whole lot just to be able to pass his own work. Iv`e probley got this wrong but re the quote this seems to be right.

Norman

 

[Midnight]

why wasn't I told kind of concerned .

'scuse me while I take care of an errant Engineer... I ummm... maybe gone some time....

Any good tips for gettin blood stains outa yer jeans....????

Wayyyyyy back while I was apprenticing, fresh outa training school I came across a sparkie running emergency lighting wire; spec said it needed to be fire proof... so I thought... pyro..... kewl....

turns out he's using some hi spec Pirelli stuff... looked 'orrible... fire rating met code and it cost less than half of pyro both in reel costs and labour... trying to find pyro thesedays is like finding hens teeth...

Megger's are a daily use tool in my line of work (dealing with up to 3kV in an offshore application), but I've yet to meet a domestic sparkie who's used a megger since college... Honestly... traditional diagnostics seems to be "suck it an see"... or at best, a quick look-see with an AVO or similar. In that respect, if these new regs tightens that up.... can it be such a bad thing....????????

 

[Anonymous]

but I've yet to meet a domestic sparkie who's used a megger since college... Honestly... traditional diagnostics seems to be "suck it an see"... or at best, a quick look-see with an AVO or similar. In that respect, if these new regs tightens that up.... can it be such a bad thing....????????

To be fair Mike, I don't have anything to do with domestics or domestic sparkies.

Closest I came was when I had to go around with the city engineers testing installations of some kit our company made and installed in homes (Earth loop impedance + insulation resistance + RCD trip time, current and fault trip times) and I expected that these tests would be carried out on every installation.


Suck it and see???? - SCARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree, tightening regs must be a good thing - 30mA (0.03A) at 240V kills :twisted:

 

[Anonymous]

When I moved into our present house I was worried about the electrics as to me it was simply a 'rats nest' of cable draped randomly around the loft. Further investigation found cut wires with taped ends, bundles of wires twisted together and wrapped with tape, sometimes the wires actually went into terminal strips, but not always and never in a junction box. I was stunned that the surveyor hadn't picked it up, especially as I asked for the utilities to be checked. The breaker panel also has some interesting loop connections as I have to turn off two breakers to isolate the bedrooms but only one for the kitchen, and the latter also kills the dinig room lights (3 rooms distant), the shed has a switch that doesn't appear to do anything other than trip the main breaker..... The list is endless.

After a long argument with the surveyor, he brought in an electrician (at their cost) who tested the whole house circuit and passed it as safe!!!!! (I wonder if he worked for ManWeb?)

During the past 4 years I have been sorting out some of the mess, bit by bit as I renovate the house. I am also a skilled electrician (that's what it says on my card anyway).

I guess I'll now keep the electrician's report that says the house is safe, leave the rest of the mess of wires, and hope for the best.... The switch in the shed still trips the main breaker.

I wonder what they'd make of my 110 Volt circuit in my workshop? Wired to US code, incidentally, once past the transformer (basically the sockets are upside-down with the earth at the bottom!).

 

[dennyk]

What happens if the sparks who re-wired your house has moved and not left a forwarding address?

What if the house was re-wired 30 years ago according to the NEW regulations that came out then, would the wiring be OK now?

I am not an incompetent, I rewired my Garage/ Workshop 4 years ago, it has its own fuse board ( contact breakers) plus RGB's for portable tools, I had an electrician check it all for me, he told me he could not have done it any better, everything was up to standard, How do I stand under Part B?

 

[dennyk]

Talking about Government creating regulatory bodies.

Just look at the fiasco the FSA caused!!!!

 

[ike]

How do I stand under Part B

To avoid serious injury in case PArt B gives way and collapses without warning, you are only allowed to stand under Part B if you are wearing a safety helmet, safety shoes and glasses, otherwise you WILL be prosecuted, (or possibly electrocuted) - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Ike