Green Electrical Certs

You have the same chance of getting a qualified and competent person to carry out your electrical installation work if they work for a contractor registered with the NICEIC or not registered.


The NICEIC does not register individuals they register enterprises i.e companies, they do not register individual qualified and competent electricians.


I would suggest that your chosen electrician be asked to produce copies of their electrical qualifications, copies of their public liability insurance and details of their experience.


For qualifications I would be looking for a Level 3 qualification in electrical installation, a Level 3 qualification in the 18th Edition of the Wiring regulations and a Level 3 qualification in inspection and testing. 


Just because the person coming to site is wearing a logo on their clothing and/or displaying a logo on their van is not an indication of qualification or competence.


Ask to see copies of the qualifications and competencies individual coming to site to do the work, if they prevaricate or unable to produce the documents say thanks but no thanks.

The colour of the certificate is not important, the content is. If you are concerned about colour ask your contactor to use Tysoft Easycert certification software and you can have any colour you like. Using software means you can go paperless and receive the EICs as PDFs for filing and sending on to your client. Retreaval at a later date is a lot easier.

Thanks John, I can see that your saying that I shouldn't be worried that the contractor isn't registered with an accredited body as long as he has liability insurance and works to a good standard ?

Regarding the colour of NICEIC certificates; 

- Red for Approved Contractors

- Purple for Domestic Installers

- Green for anyone not registered with NICEIC. 


Regards,


Alan.

I suspect the person who told you this has an interest in boosting membership of the club.

It is important to realise NICIEC certificates are just their own creation that is loosely based on the original IET model  as required by the wiring regs.

There is no particular legal significance to the fact that they sell special  "members only" ones in another colour.

And there are other trade  bodies electricians may prefer to belong to (NAPIT is probably the next biggest one.) 

As John notes, each individual is rarely inspected.  indeed, in a large organisation, the person dealing with NICIEC registration may not do or look at  much real wiring at all, and at the same time the real workforce may come no-where near the NICIEC area rep. In many ways, demonstrating a good filing system and keeping up the subscription payments, becomes more important than actual wiring quality. (and there are some remarkably rough jobs from bigger concerns as a consequence) In some cases one man band is more likely to be reliable.


Mike

Depends on what you want and expect. If you want the [wafer thin] guarantee of standards provided for full membership, Approved Contractor, then the red bit and associated logo is the way to go for a quick indication if you cannot actually be bothered to check the credentials of the registered or not entity online at niceic.com, or check the persons attending and installing are suitably qualified and insured.


Tysoft is good and you can use any colour you like; their forms are loosely based on NICEIC format, in fact some may say near identical.


If it is just for Part P and dwellings, and you like the little house logo on the cert, the purple is the way to go.


There is a complaints and action procedure associated with the level of membership [stop chuckling], so if you are expecting some level of standard for say commercial/industrial and the spec says use an NICEIC Approved Contractor so there is at least some theoretical route of redress if the work is rubbish or unsafe, but you use simply a Domestic Installer [cute little house badge] or a firm not registered at all with them, there will be no guarantee of standards provided by the NICEIC for that scope of work.


Very much the same for Periodic Inspection, there is a demarcation on what is notionally guaranteed by level of membership [you are still sniggering at the back there, stop it!]


Of course all things fall flat if the person attending site and installing or inspecting is not suitably competent, as can happen as only the firm or entity is registered, individuals are not. So, as stated by others, check the individual as well as the Firm. The individual is a bit more difficult to verify, but someone with an up to date JIB/ECS card with "registered electrician" on it is a good start.