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PAT Testing

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
Booked on a pat testing course next week and trying to find some revision material online but having no joy.


Its a one day course so I can’t imagine having much on the day.


does anyone have anything they can pass over or send me to?


Clint


  • 0
    A friend, an electrician, ran the local electrical and PAT training courses for a large training company. The company contracted an external company to PAT all the companies appliances etc. My friend was surprised to find the tester passed all his faulty, deliberately induced faults, cables and appliances that he used for the PAT training. All had big red labels on saying "faulty do not use" but they still got passed. Obviously the contractor was "invited" to come back and do the job properly.


    My view of commercial PAT is that it is usually a futile exercise to absolve blame in the event of a problem. I do testing for existing customers and charge for my time rather than by item and the few problems I have found are usually by inspection rather than testing. I also explain to my customers the risk analysis process they should be following and they usually put an inspection process in place rather than PAT everything every year. They are however at the small end of the commercial scale and are able to take responsibility for doing it properly and have few appliances that need inspection.
  • 0
    Nice one KFH,

    puts it all into perspective.

    Bit like the how often we should get our test gear calibrated.

    A strict one per year call for everyone is silly.

    Horses for courses - the one man band who buys his test gear with his own hard earned money and self tests regulary does not need the same approach as the firm whose emplyees uses the firms and throws them in the back of the van.

    For one the yearly cal might be too much and the other nowhere near often enough.

    The same conserations apply for PAT etc
  • 0

    Brimmo:




    Farmboy:

    PAT testing is a bit misleading actually. As evidenced by the current vs 4 code of practice, it's now called in service inspection and testing, which recognises that more than just portable appliances now need testing / inspecting, such as various fixed appliances also.


    That said, however, you may find that the course is tailored for anyone, ordinary people and electricians alike,  so will cover training for just portable appliances, without covering fixed appliances which will require safe isolation procedure to be undertaken, which ordinary people won't do, so they'll only be able to test plug in appliances; which means you could only be doing part of the testing job on a site.

     




    Now this is very interesting - always thought PAT was very inconsistent with mostly visual inspections carried out by a 'competent' person... Considering the IET CoP for  in-service inspection and testing of electrical equipment was updated in 2012 (4th Ed) I haven't heard anyone else mention iSiT (what I am going to call it from now on!) - I guess that this is because in reality, the competences required are higher, and therefore going to take more time and cost more? 

    In my opinion, to do PAT / iSiT properly, every site would need a complete risk assessment for every type of item / general location / use, and in a school there are hundreds, if not thousands of electrical items... The HSE though, through its own case study seems to think it should be made easier...:

    http://www.hse.gov.uk/electricity/faq-portable-appliance-testing.htm 


     




    The 3rd Edition of the Code of Practice was also called the Code of Practice for In-service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment, so the name of the process hasn't actually changed.

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