Electrical Competency, what is it?

Back in the 1980’s I worked as a subbie carpenter on Bovis Homes new housing sites, the electrical contractor was Big Bert, Bert Salcombe to give him his correct title, Big Bert contracted the work and employed two subbies The Two Steve’s to do the work, Steve Clarkson and Steve Evans who then employed some younger guys to work alongside them, I used to sit and have a cup of tea and eat my lunch with the entire workforce of Clarkson Evans electrical contracting including the senior management The Two Steve’s themselves.

Big Bert ordered the materials and the wholesalers van driver left the boxes containing what was required for each plot and stage in one of the Steve’s garden shed ready for the next day. The Two Steve’s then got the work done.

When Big Bert retired the Two Steve’s took over the whole operation and turned it into one of the top fifty electrical contracting companies in the UK, I see their vans out on the road most days, though there’s only one Steve now.

I worked on other sites where there were similar arrangements, one guy known as The Silver Fox, and spotted on site just as frequently, ran his electrical business from the Post Office he and his wife had in the village where he lived, firms like this had and still do have electricians who rarely work on a live installation and rarely test or power up their own work.

There is the opportunity to make a good living by doing repetitive work on new installations first and second fixing, without getting involved in testing and inspecting at all.

However and it is a VERY BIG HOWEVER, working as a one man band electrician out of the back of a van is a completely different ball game to working on a big site where there’s a segregation of labour into first, second and third fixes or whatever. The list of skills, talents, training, education, experience, knowledge that is required to be a one man band working out of the back of a van is phenomenal, it’s in a different league to being an electrician who spends their working life installing boxes, containment and pulling cables on site, but everyone does the same basic training.  

Yesterday I mentioned talking to Tony Cable at Elex and he said he failed his exams at college and had to retake them, which was a wake up call. He then went on to do the “C” course, I ha only ever met a handful of electricians who have done the “C” course, I did C&G parts 1 and 2, but there was a part 3, the C course from when they were parts A, B and C. The C course was still being run when I did my training, but I had already spent three years doing evening classes and working more than full time whilst still having the kids living at home and so on and so forth, to sign up for another year of evening classes at a college miles from home when I could be working miles away in the opposite direction without a real sense of purpose and a definable reason for getting the qualification, as in “how will it further my career and increase my earnings“  meant I decided not to do it.

My local college was doing the OND and HND in Electrical Engineering, I spoke to the guy who ran the course and nearly told him what to do with himself, his first comment was “ I’ve met guys like you before, you've done the electrical installation courses and think you can do the OND, but cannot do the maths” which was said without actually asking me if I had passed my maths exams, I may not be the best Mathematician, but he didn’t know if I was good or not because he knocked me back without actually asking, needless to say I dropped the idea of doing the OND because I couldn’t face the idea of spending my evenings in a classroom with that guy and again I had no real idea of what I would gain by getting the qualification.

There comes a point where you have to be realistic and say to yourself, actually I don’t need anymore electrical qualifications for the work that I am doing, because I have all the relevant qualifications and do the other things like working at height training and so on.

I still have it in mind to do the BS7909 course this year, but I’m still trying to determine how to make it personally rewarding, though I do have a specific idea in mind which would justify spending three days training at  Figure of Eight down in Cardiff or somewhere similar, which is venturing into a completely different world to electrical installation in houses and flats.

Going back to the original post, the qualifications that help to determine if you are competent depends on what you actually do, trying to write a generic list isn’t really possible, why do you need an inspection and testing qualification if you are earning £48k per year pulling cables and first fixing?

Back in the 1980’s I worked as a subbie carpenter on Bovis Homes new housing sites, the electrical contractor was Big Bert, Bert Salcombe to give him his correct title, Big Bert contracted the work and employed two subbies The Two Steve’s to do the work, Steve Clarkson and Steve Evans who then employed some younger guys to work alongside them, I used to sit and have a cup of tea and eat my lunch with the entire workforce of Clarkson Evans electrical contracting including the senior management The Two Steve’s themselves.

Big Bert ordered the materials and the wholesalers van driver left the boxes containing what was required for each plot and stage in one of the Steve’s garden shed ready for the next day. The Two Steve’s then got the work done.

When Big Bert retired the Two Steve’s took over the whole operation and turned it into one of the top fifty electrical contracting companies in the UK, I see their vans out on the road most days, though there’s only one Steve now.

I worked on other sites where there were similar arrangements, one guy known as The Silver Fox, and spotted on site just as frequently, ran his electrical business from the Post Office he and his wife had in the village where he lived, firms like this had and still do have electricians who rarely work on a live installation and rarely test or power up their own work.

There is the opportunity to make a good living by doing repetitive work on new installations first and second fixing, without getting involved in testing and inspecting at all.

However and it is a VERY BIG HOWEVER, working as a one man band electrician out of the back of a van is a completely different ball game to working on a big site where there’s a segregation of labour into first, second and third fixes or whatever. The list of skills, talents, training, education, experience, knowledge that is required to be a one man band working out of the back of a van is phenomenal, it’s in a different league to being an electrician who spends their working life installing boxes, containment and pulling cables on site, but everyone does the same basic training.  

Yesterday I mentioned talking to Tony Cable at Elex and he said he failed his exams at college and had to retake them, which was a wake up call. He then went on to do the “C” course, I ha only ever met a handful of electricians who have done the “C” course, I did C&G parts 1 and 2, but there was a part 3, the C course from when they were parts A, B and C. The C course was still being run when I did my training, but I had already spent three years doing evening classes and working more than full time whilst still having the kids living at home and so on and so forth, to sign up for another year of evening classes at a college miles from home when I could be working miles away in the opposite direction without a real sense of purpose and a definable reason for getting the qualification, as in “how will it further my career and increase my earnings“  meant I decided not to do it.

My local college was doing the OND and HND in Electrical Engineering, I spoke to the guy who ran the course and nearly told him what to do with himself, his first comment was “ I’ve met guys like you before, you've done the electrical installation courses and think you can do the OND, but cannot do the maths” which was said without actually asking me if I had passed my maths exams, I may not be the best Mathematician, but he didn’t know if I was good or not because he knocked me back without actually asking, needless to say I dropped the idea of doing the OND because I couldn’t face the idea of spending my evenings in a classroom with that guy and again I had no real idea of what I would gain by getting the qualification.

There comes a point where you have to be realistic and say to yourself, actually I don’t need anymore electrical qualifications for the work that I am doing, because I have all the relevant qualifications and do the other things like working at height training and so on.

I still have it in mind to do the BS7909 course this year, but I’m still trying to determine how to make it personally rewarding, though I do have a specific idea in mind which would justify spending three days training at  Figure of Eight down in Cardiff or somewhere similar, which is venturing into a completely different world to electrical installation in houses and flats.

Going back to the original post, the qualifications that help to determine if you are competent depends on what you actually do, trying to write a generic list isn’t really possible, why do you need an inspection and testing qualification if you are earning £48k per year pulling cables and first fixing?