Electrical Competency, what is it?

Qualifications - a demonstration of knowledge, and in some respects, skills. Knowledge needs to be kept up to date with CPD.

Experience - it needs to be good, not necessarily lengthy. It saves having to work out how to do things every time a new situation is encountered.

Skills - fine motor skills, especially.

Attitude - commitment to doing a decent job. Reflection.

What makes anyone competent?

Competence is a combination of the following attributes:
Skils
Knowledge
Attitude
Training
Experience
Knowledge of one's own limitations

We can't agree as an industry on what skills, knowledge and training are necessary as a minimum, and if and how these can be properly assessed.

Once you reach “competent” things don't stop there, because, as technology and installation practices move on, so the competent person needs to keep up-to-date.

davezawadi (David Stone): 
 

I want to move to a slightly different branch of the EICR question, and this should cover the range of Electrical work. What makes an Electrician Competent? What makes an Inspector competent, whether for an EICR or EICs?

davezawadi,

I totally agree with the vast number of your posts and your particular interest in those persons completing EICR's and EIC's in fact I would like to speak with you on the subject of the exact same issue of those persons completing electrical inspection reports in the world I live in, so please drop me a message.

Competance is a combination of knowledge and experience of those pices of equipment or installation being worked on, after all all we have in the UK is Reg 16 of the EAWR 1989 to define those carrying out electrical work, also with no definition or legal protection of the word “Electrician” we are in this mess and I dont see an easy solution. In the world I work in I would like to think Im more than competant but there are other areas of electrical installations of which I have never worked on so Im happy to stay away from that as Im declaring my own incompetance. But other people wont, I on a regular likley two week basis get calls from so called electricians asking for my advice how to test a particular installation that Imm a SME on! my advice is pack up your tools and testers and leave the premises, the primary fault of course lies with the client who engaged them without empoying a suitably trained and competant person.

Yes people may have 2391 and 2392 quals etc, but does that mean they can test anything or are fully competant of course not, be we live in a world now of tick box spreadsheets, so if somebody has just passed their testing course then they can now test anything?

In Scotland we recently had a Scot Gov consultation on protecting the word electrician and who can do electrical work/testing/inspecting, I was one of very few individuals that responded in fact only a few of the well known electrical contracting bodies bothered responding and makes some interesting reading.

In my view we need to break down the industry into sectors a one stop title of electrician cant work, we need to perhaps look at the Gas Safe modular system and use that basic framework, with upfront basic modules and then specilist modules, then regular update and refresh courses to ensure bad habits aint happening. So what is a gas fitter? so somebody that connects up a gas boiler will have proven his competancy on that unit but means he cant work on a industrial/commercial gas fired combustion unit on a dryer etc.

So could we really spilt our industry into domestic, retail/commercial,light industrial and Industrial, process control, medical, flammable atmospheres. Have it you can be either an competant installer and/or inspector, but you cant be an inspector until at least five years after qualifying as an installer to ensure you gain the further knowledge and critically experience?

GTB   

Edit - woops - this reply was posted at the same time as the one above mine - which echos much of what I'm saying below…..

I think maybe it gets a bit more complicated than all of the above replies - I think I'm certainly competent in some basic areas but certainly not in others - there's too much industry specific detail that I've forgotten or not kept abreast of, is new, I never knew in the first place, such as the electrical parts of Rail, Sewerage, Petrol, gas, Clean water - Rail, Clean and dirty water - I have spent at least a year each installing in these environments, I've been working around, had to consider and implement the health and safety parts, and been inspected by umteen different people after we have finished the job. Some of those environments, wow, you can take some pride in your work. nothing short of perfect is accepted. 

But I know enough to know, what I don't know enough of, to be a competent inspector on these areas now. And there are a million other areas just like this. 

My qualifications have an AM2 hole in it - so I cant get a JIB gold card

I don't have a degree, or a specific management qualification so cant get a JIB black card

I've been an NICEIC QS for 13 years - mostly in commercial contracts for my own company. Very small micro company, where a lot of the time I'm doing the actual work alongside my small team. 

I've got the C&G Lvl 1&2 - no one mentioned anything about AM2 - did it even exist in the early 2000s? and from 2003, the 2391 Inspection and testing and later the 2396 Design, plus 20 odd years of experience. 

JIB would say I'm not competent. 

NICEIC would say that I am. Who's criteria to apply? 

Unfortunately because we as electricians have not, historically, followed an homogenous route to being qualified, it is very difficult to set a base standard now, just for the use of the term qualified - let alone competent. Being a part of the NICEIC AC is supposed to reassure people about the very question. Perhaps inspectors should only be allowed to inspect if they're registered as an individual with a governing body? (I can see the money rolling in for that, and what happens when an inspector joins and leaves a company or wants to inspect this sector of electrics or that? For surely he/she's not competent to do it all. So do we then break it down still further? Its going to be a quagmire for sure. 

Does the current gas safe scheme significantly improve promote safety, or stifle novel approaches to managing heating and so forth ?

I agree it regulates the wo/man on the doorstep with a bag of spanners, but does it just make him /her very good at one thing, and not so good at the bigger picture and thinking "outside the box" ? (heat pumps come to mind..)

A great many ‘heating engineers’ are really slaves to following a few pre-pack recipes , rather than generally competent.

I'm not sure we want electrics to go the same way, so 

imagine 

“I can’t do two way light switching, I've not got the paperwork for that ” -would be silly - right ?

Mike.

I can be reached GTB, my email is davezawadi(at)yahoo.co.uk and my phone number is 075 78 

997 199.

I am not part of the secret service!

Any of you may ring for a chat. I am quite resistant to abuse, however.

I read this week that the youngest Gas Safe Installer recently qualified, at 16.

Oh jeez …  Equation: Physics + H&S  =   ?     ……. [some of]  BS7671     ;-)    

This thread has not quite gone where I hoped. We know the general definition, I would like comments on whether these are met by electricians in general, and if not where we need improvements. Thanks.

Kind regards

David

davezawadi (David Stone): 
 

I want to move to a slightly different branch of the EICR question, and this should cover the range of Electrical work. What makes an Electrician Competent? What makes an Inspector competent, whether for an EICR or EICs?

The ability to do the job correctly.

Z.