Wjo Can And Who Can't

[Breeze83]

Hi guys just a quickie, I used to work at a company who was part of the eca, they had one guy who was qualified to level 3 and the eca supervisor, the rest of the guys were data engineers with no electrical quals, can the data guys perform mods to circuits etc?
Just curious
Thanks in advance

 

[Richard Burns]

So long as the "data guys" are competent in electrical work (and generally this means having qualifications or long term experience) then they coudl make modifications to a circuit.
If as you say they have no electrical qualifications then if they made an error or did not fully test or certificate the modification then it would be difficult to prove they were competent in a court of law if something went wrong.

 

[Breeze83]

Maybe 1 in 30 jobs was certified and tested unless you count using a martindale lol, I suppose the difficulty is when your boss tells you as a data engineer you can do power even if you know he's wrong what do you do?

anyway thanks for the info it's appreciated

 

[Pete999]

Seen a lot of "data guys" as you call them, doing electrical installs/alteration during my time traveling overseas, 13 amp sockets wired in alarm cable, even had to go to the States to sort out some "data guys" work, he had nearly killed someone, my opinion "data guys" stick to what you are good at and that's generally not messing with LV stuff.

 

[Breeze83]

These guys even tho have no qualifications have a basic knowledge and would never do anything like that, I just wanted to know if the eca badge covered everyone working for that company or only those with electrical qualifications

 

[Richard Burns]

The company could put it forward that the ECA supervisor is the qualified supervisor and is monitoring the installation work being done by the others, he then signs off the design and testing and the installer signs off the installing, however I think it sounds like it would be hard to justify this on investigation.

 

[Breeze83]

the paper trail is non existent there as is the amount of testing that was/is done regardless of skill level, tbh this thread was more to confirm what I thought was right and the warnings I had given former employees were just

 

[Wilko]

Hi Breeze, it's my understanding that all electrical work needs to be tested in order to be in compliance with BS7971. So if the ECA dude was not following around the data dudes inspecting and testing and certificating every change (small or large) then the company and its directors will be held to account in a court of law if the worst happens. As always, I'm happy to be corrected . As a former company man if I found that incorrect process was followed on purpose then that mob were shown the door. It's just not that hard or expensive to do it the right way, and that was what I was paying for