Registration to a governing body

Chalkybones · Aug 29, 2013

Hi All,
As a sparks from the 90's I am competent and thorough in all the work I do, I have recently (last year) completed the full scope part p and sat the 17th edition refresher course, so I'm more up to date with current regulations.
My company (not electrically biased) have enrolled in the NIC EIC approved contractor scheme, I have been asked to be the qualified supervisor, the pre assessment is due at the end of September.
Reading the booklet that accompanies the application, it outlines the points that the assessor will need to cover, such as; 5 samples of work, test certificates, qualifications etc.
There are 2 of us in the company with the same type of experience (worked as sparks for years covering all aspects of work about 15-20 years ago)
As we have not been registered previously, we have not taken on any notifiable works, we have however been doing some minor works such as replacing fittings, test and make safe (TMS) which involves checking installations that have been subject to water ingress, or fire damage and have been filling out minor works certs for this work (as most TMS work only requires testing of individual affected circuits, testing for IR, Zs, RCD functions etc, we issue a minor works cert with the test results for that circuit, we then recommend any upgrades required such as RCD, Earth issues etc.
We have full test equipment to complete the full range of tests, and if any remedial work is required we instruct a registered electrician to cover the notifiable works.

My questions are;

Do we need to be registered to carry out the works I have described? predominantly the TMS works (as this is the majority of the work)
I'm thinking this assessment is not worth going through with as we can't satisfy the requirements, as we have no installation work completed we have no work to show the assessor, we can show the test certs for the minor works, but no other certs either.
Should we opt for a different type of enrolment to cover the work we do? (I will be contacting them to discuss, but would like some general opinions first)
If we decide to go for the approved contractor, I would need to arrange some installation work, or board change works, and pay the council notification fee to allow us to do the work, is that correct? (our problem is most of our clients, will not use us if we are not registered with a governing body!! catch 22)

My apologies for the long winded thread, it's certainly changed from "back in the day!!" for the better I will admit! but there are quite a bit of conflicting views out there.
I want to be compliant with all the regulations, but don't want to have to go through registration if not needed.

Chalky.

Engineer54 · Aug 29, 2013

The NICEIC and other such companies are NOT governing bodies, although the NIC often considers/thinks that that are!!

Not sure how your company can become an ''Approved Contractor'' you certainly don't meet much of the original criteria that used to be required. But then it's become more of a money game these days, so nothing much would surprise me about the NICEIC today!!

KFH · Aug 30, 2013

Change a consumer unit in your own house or a colleagues.

There is a grey area about notification of BC, most schemes do not appear to be worried if you notify via themselves after your registration. You need to talk to the scheme about thier criteria. What is published does not alwasy appear to be what they will actually take.

They are after the money and it is very hard to fail the registration process, you never hear of anyone failling.

Jay Sparks · Aug 30, 2013

Chalkybones said:
Hi All,
As a sparks from the 90's I am competent and thorough in all the work I do, I have recently (last year) completed the full scope part p and sat the 17th edition refresher course, so I'm more up to date with current regulations.
My company (not electrically biased) have enrolled in the NIC EIC approved contractor scheme, I have been asked to be the qualified supervisor, the pre assessment is due at the end of September.
Reading the booklet that accompanies the application, it outlines the points that the assessor will need to cover, such as; 5 samples of work, test certificates, qualifications etc.
There are 2 of us in the company with the same type of experience (worked as sparks for years covering all aspects of work about 15-20 years ago)
As we have not been registered previously, we have not taken on any notifiable works, we have however been doing some minor works such as replacing fittings, test and make safe (TMS) which involves checking installations that have been subject to water ingress, or fire damage and have been filling out minor works certs for this work (as most TMS work only requires testing of individual affected circuits, testing for IR, Zs, RCD functions etc, we issue a minor works cert with the test results for that circuit, we then recommend any upgrades required such as RCD, Earth issues etc.
We have full test equipment to complete the full range of tests, and if any remedial work is required we instruct a registered electrician to cover the notifiable works.

My questions are;

Do we need to be registered to carry out the works I have described? predominantly the TMS works (as this is the majority of the work)

I'm thinking this assessment is not worth going through with as we can't satisfy the requirements, as we have no installation work completed we have no work to show the assessor, we can show the test certs for the minor works, but no other certs either.

Should we opt for a different type of enrolment to cover the work we do? (I will be contacting them to discuss, but would like some general opinions first)

If we decide to go for the approved contractor, I would need to arrange some installation work, or board change works, and pay the council notification fee to allow us to do the work, is that correct? (our problem is most of our clients, will not use us if we are not registered with a governing body!! catch 22)

My apologies for the long winded thread, it's certainly changed from "back in the day!!" for the better I will admit! but there are quite a bit of conflicting views out there.
I want to be compliant with all the regulations, but don't want to have to go through registration if not needed.

Chalky.

You may be better off becoming a "Domestic Installer" instead of the "Approved contractor". And if its purely for notification, Stroma are the cheapest and the criteria for joining as a DI, with any scheme is different to becoming an Approved contractor.

Chalkybones · Aug 30, 2013

Thanks for your comments, I have spoken to them this morning outlining our usual area of work, as you say the criteria is not always black and white, the fact that I have EICR's and MWC's for various jobs should be enough to at least go through the assessment process, along with the fact that, at present, we sub contract the remedial works to registered sparks, we could now take this work on ourselves .....better profits, which is why we do it!!
If at the time of assessment they decide we're better suited to DIS or the CPS then they will amend our assessment to suit.
Lets see what happens in the assessment.