Electrician and QS on trial for death of woman

[rompling]

I Know its been posted about before but it seems the trial has begun ....
Very sad
Emma Shaw electrocuted 'because electrician was UNQUALIFIED' | Mail Online

 

[tazz]

As we are taught there are a variety of factors that can affect it,if a person is wet then they will be more vulnerable to a current flowing through their body plus theoretically is it not possible for an extremely high current to flow in those few milliseconds before an RCD can react?All the tests that decided on the figures for RCD values are based on theory,they never actually did any test on humans did they?so we don't actually know what the safe values are for certain.

Fair comment.........don`t you think we have all had a bash at this, old and new, without slanging matches...I think this has been a constructive debate...!

 

[Badged01]

Fair comment.........don`t you think we have all had a bash at this, old and new, without slanging matches...I think this has been a constructive debate...!

I take it by that you mean the grumpy old gits havent logged on yet .....

 

[benji]

don,t think i,ve ever seen the metal studwork in a partition wall earthed

 

[tazz]

I take it by that you mean the grumpy old gits havent logged on yet .....

The grumpy old gits are skilled guys just set in there ways...give them good input...you`ll get good output...!

 

[tazz]

don,t think i,ve ever seen the metal studwork in a partition wall earthed

Has luck would have it, studwork wasn`t the main material used in the 70/80s wood was, other wised the 15th would have bonded it too

 

[PEG]

I take it by that you mean the grumpy old gits havent logged on yet .....

Neither grumpy,old or gittish...but am logged on...This debate brings to mind another problem regarding the frequent arguments we make regarding being competent. I do not know all the details regarding this case,but as everyone is happy to call one of the individuals,"an electrician",we can deduce he possessed the "proper" training,authorization etc. Yet he is still in the mire...I have often talked about the fact that apprenticeships,time-served,qualifications and certification,do NOT guarantee a standard of work. For instance,the fellow judged responsible for the gas explosion near me in Irlam a while ago,was all of the above. We have ALL seen supposedly pukka sparks,leave unbelievable set-ups in their wake...last week i visited an installation where an electrician had put a large 3ph submain a considerable distance,SWA to the PME (insufficient size) straight to the metal Db,linked in 16mm straight to a TT rod...all signed off. Now,if a "electrical trainee" had done that correctly,would that be better or worse? ..And just to prove my grumpiness,10Ma,30Ma...it is like the drink-drive limits,there are no "safe" limits on an RCD,just limits that make it safer...people have received fatal shocks from jump starting cars and fondling electric eels. :wheelchair:

 

[Guest111]

Fair comment.........don`t you think we have all had a bash at this, old and new, without slanging matches...I think this has been a constructive debate...!

Exactly! what a pleasant change to have an intelligent discussion without it deteriorating into a slagging off session.

 

[MDJ]

Because the QS (the assessed competent and trained electrical supervisor) is discharging his duties for him, checking all the work has been done correctly and signing all relevent paperwork to this effect! The bosses shoulders have sloped .......

I agree thats why the QS system is a joke really, the boss sent the mate to the JOB, I expect the QS had no idea he was sent there and just signed the paperwork, the QS is guilty of not checking the job out, the boss is guilty of sending an unqualified guy to the job and the mate guilty of forging the paperwork lol, all 3 should be in court.

 

[Guest111]

I take it by that you mean the grumpy old gits havent logged on yet .....

I'm one of the grumpy old git's but I'm working hard to be more sociable.lol

 

[Guest111]

I agree thats why the QS system is a joke really, the boss sent the mate to the JOB, I expect the QS had no idea he was sent there and just signed the paperwork, the QS is guilty of not checking the job out, the boss is guilty of sending an unqualified guy to the job and the mate guilty of forging the paperwork lol, all 3 should be in court.

Some of the inspections are dire to say the least,we recently had our house done,we rent from a large social landlord,anyway the guy was in and out in less than an hour. I couldn't follow him around all the time but he certainly didn't do half of what I'd have expected,put it this way I recently replaced all the sockets in the kitchen with stainless ones and he didn't remove one of them to make sure it had been done correctly.There seems to be a lot of this going on nowadays and from speaking to some of the lads in the social housing they are under a lot of pressure to do a certain amount of inspections per day,maybe the fact that their bosses push them should be brought up if ever there is a court case,we know being pushed isn't an excuse for poor work but in some cases it must certainly be a contributing factor.

 

[Badged01]

There's a lot of pressure put on people in all walks of life to do things quicker, cheaper etc .... all to make more money/profit for someone else and when you've got a family to feed and mortgage to pay it can make you do things you know you shouldnt do! But ultimately you know once you put your name on that bit of paper if things go wrong its gonna come back and bit you on the butt.

I was always told, "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime" ..... needs a bit of para-phrasing for electrical work but Im sure you get the jest!

 

[Guest111]

There's a lot of pressure put on people in all walks of life to do things quicker, cheaper etc .... all to make more money/profit for someone else and when you've got a family to feed and mortgage to pay it can make you do things you know you shouldnt do! But ultimately you know once you put your name on that bit of paper if things go wrong its gonna come back and bit you on the butt.

I was always told, "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime" ..... needs a bit of para-phrasing for electrical work but Im sure you get the jest!

Too right,many years ago I worked as a QS for a firm and packed in because they wanted me to make up test sheets for houses rather than test each one,basically they wanted me to test something like 1 in 5 and adjust the figures slightly for the other 4.

 

[Badged01]

Social housing contracts are cut throat! The commercial guys win the contracts at ridiculously low bids just so they get the work. They then expect someone else to put their butts on the line to make sure they make the profit they want. And of course there is no comeback on the commercial team if someone is injured or killed, its the inspector signing it all off!

On a similar note, I once did a bid where I wanted two £1M test rigs to do the contract. Having won the contract it was then decided by the commercial director (against engineering advice) that we would only order one test rig and 'thrash' it 24/7. 2 years down the line after the contract started the program was slipping quicker than going down a greasy firemans pole. 'Told you' was the cry and with some pretty hefty liquidated damages looming the decision was made to procure another one to recover. Don't bother was my response, save yourself £1M, we are going to slip 1 yr but the lead-time for a new rig is 18mths!

Making money is such a big driver that people will take risks and all engineering logic just flies out the window. You just have to have the moral courage to stand up and say "NO", which is a lot easier to say than do!

 

[Diddy]

All these guy's signing off stuff that they have not personally checked at least even a random re-check or something for goodness sake. Me ? I even sign "Unchecked" when I have copped the delivery driver before the boss or apprentice haha.

 

[pepparz]

would say without correct bonding, an RCD isn`t worth a carrot

dont understand this, bonding isnt needed for the operation of a rcd

 

[NickD]

My understanding of rcds from the 80`s ....is a human body would withstand upto 50mA before fatality occurs....hence rcds where set at 30mA, so using the human body as a path to earth, a limited current would pass in only milli seconds to trip the said rcd, hence saving the life, so Part of the Ecir test, would be the rcd ms timing....

My understanding, horrible though it is, is that the limits of how many mA will kill a human were largely investigated and established in ---- concentration camps during the 1940s.

 

[pepparz]

her body was live through the live puddle but she'd have felt nothing until she tounched earth which was the potenial difference needed for electricution. had an rcd been installed it would have operated as soon as she earthed herself which is the impalance needed to operate the device, so whats bonding got to do with it?

 

[NickD]

her body was live through the live puddle but she'd have felt nothing until she tounched earth which was the potenial difference needed for electricution. had an rcd been installed it would have operated as soon as she earthed herself which is the impalance needed to operate the device, so whats bonding got to do with it?

Eggsactly.

"First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature?"

 

[pepparz]

if anyone has problems understanding how this electricution happened and how it could have been avoided please dont do any electrical work.

 

[silver surfer]

Because the QS (the assessed competent and trained electrical supervisor) is discharging his duties for him, checking all the work has been done correctly and signing all relevent paperwork to this effect! The bosses shoulders have sloped .......[Usually the Managing director or owner of the company is the Duty holder for the business, i"m surprised that he isn't in the dock, he still could be the trial is in its infancy.]

 

[silver surfer]

Because the QS (the assessed competent and trained electrical supervisor) is discharging his duties for him, checking all the work has been done correctly and signing all relevent paperwork to this effect! The bosses shoulders have sloped .......[Usually the Managing director or owner of the company is the Duty holder for the business, i"m surprised that he isn't in the dock, he still could be the trial is in its infancy.]

 

[barneybhoy]

The niceic lead you to believe that the qs is not responsible for how the inspector obtained the readings in the report, only that the report is compiled correctly and any issues that should be flagged up by the readings are recorded appropriately. If the eicr was filled in correctly and there were no readings recorded that would show any sort of issue, surely the qs wouldnt be held responsible for someone elses work?

 

[Plonker 3]

So why do all the scams only asses the QS annually then?

 

[Badged01]

Who actually gets prosecuted is usually down to H&S. I think they take the view that the 'electrician' doing the work is responsible along with the supervisor (QS) who is the companies delegated technical/competant authority. The "duty holder" has exercise his duty of care in appointing a QS under the govt endorsed scheme which is there to ensure safety standards etc...!

I think the logic is the electrician shouldn't be doing the work unless he is "competent", so he is clearly culpable, and the QS shouldn't be signing off work he 1) hasn't checked and 2) is done by someone who isn't "competent". Hence he is equally culpable.

 

[Plonker 3]

So surely if it's done via a scam, then the scam is liable too. As they have said the QS is competent, like the QS has said the person carrying out the work is?

 

[Badged01]

So surely if it's done via a scam, then the scam is liable too. As they have said the QS is competent, like the QS has said the person carrying out the work is?

He probably is "competent" and has all the quals, experience, knowledge etc ... required to meet the govts assessment std for being a QS. He just hasn't behaved in a competent way in this case!!

 

[barneybhoy]

Who actually gets prosecuted is usually down to H&S. I think they take the view that the 'electrician' doing the work is responsible along with the supervisor (QS) who is the companies delegated technical/competant authority. The "duty holder" has exercise his duty of care in appointing a QS under the govt endorsed scheme which is there to ensure safety standards etc...!

I think the logic is the electrician shouldn't be doing the work unless he is "competent", so he is clearly culpable, and the QS shouldn't be signing off work he 1) hasn't checked and 2) is done by someone who isn't "competent". Hence he is equally culpable.

how far can the QS reasonably go to ensure the work is being carried out correctly? If you've got 10 guys working under you, you cant be with all 10 of them at every stage of the inspection/testing, how can you protect yourself? Even with regular supervision checks you still have to take the inspector at face value that they have carried out the job correctly, apart from going through all results with a fine tooth comb and implementing regular checks (keeping a record of checks) what else can the QS realistically do

 

[The_Wanderer]

To say someone was tragically killed and i quote "because" of the guy who did the inspection is madness is it not? He didn't cause anyone death, might have failed to spot a fault maybe, but even that is impossible to know or prove.

I once had a nightmare fault finding a tripping RCD, that after several hours we found only happened when a large pile of books (or similar) was placed on the hallway desk, without the books all circuits had clean IR results and no errors could be found. But put the books on the desk and viola IR readings of dead short L-E.

So who's to say this fella didn't do his testing when the screw wasn't quite making a short, but it later did short and killed the poor woman..?

Amazed it got to court, surely a lawyer would destroy the claim as totally unprovable, and it wouldn't even see the light of day? Very worrying precedent for our work if you can be accountable after an EICR for tragic incidents out of your control. Sure it sounds like he wasn't confident and thats bad, but still. I shall watch this case with interest.

And for the media to jump on the "unqualified" tagline, Pretty certain the laws and regs on qualified or not is very muddy area, i.e. doesn't it state a "competent person"..

 

[silver surfer]

Who actually gets prosecuted is usually down to H&S. I think they take the view that the 'electrician' doing the work is responsible along with the supervisor (QS) who is the companies delegated technical/competant authority. The "duty holder" has exercise his duty of care in appointing a QS under the govt endorsed scheme which is there to ensure safety standards etc...!

I think the logic is the electrician shouldn't be doing the work unless he is "competent", so he is clearly culpable, and the QS shouldn't be signing off work he 1) hasn't checked and 2) is done by someone who isn't "competent". Hence he is equally culpable.

I agree that the duty holder is fulfilling his responsibilities regarding appointing a suitable QS. But the DH should be held to account for sending a clearly unsuitable person to carry out the testing. Im unsure whether the QS actually fabricated the results or was he handed a set of bogus results by the adult mate.

 

[Badged01]

... Amazed it got to court, surely a lawyer would destroy the claim as totally unprovable, and it wouldn't even see the light of day? Very worrying precedent for our work if you can be accountable after an EICR for tragic incidents out of your control. Sure it sounds like he wasn't confident and thats bad, but still. I shall watch this case with interest....

Very worrying case for anyone who is a QS! You are signing the paperwork to say you're happy that everything meets all the regs etc...... as far as you can reasonably expect it to. If you weren't doing that what exactly are you signing for?

How you ensure everything is 'correct' before you sign is upto you -- standing over their shoulder watching them all the time, dip checking samples of their work once completed, suprise visits on the job to see how they are doing, or whatever your supervision method is. However you do it as a QS you will have documented it in your works diary(?) so can use that in your defence to show how you exercise your duty as a QS for all the work you do supervise to ensure as far as you possible can it meets regs etc .....

I'm assuming in this case the QS has signed off work completed by someone 'unqualified' to conduct an EICR, so he will have a hard time defending his supervison actions! The fact that the boss send him to do the work is immaterial .... he should never have signed it!