I have had it a few times recently where "specialist" contractors fell way short of their title
The most recent one was at the local church my wife is on the PCC and since the church warden found out I was an electrician a few years ago I get asked to review some of the testing work carried out at the church
This year it was the lightning conductor test it returned a fail and the church warden asked for my opinion as last year and extra rod was installed to bring the rod resistance down below the required 10Ω the installation of this rod certainly didn't follow the recommendations but the resistance was brought down to just below 8Ω so it was ok, so this year the test was carried out and returned a reading of 164Ω which rang some alarm bells with the church warden so I was asked for my opinion as to why the resistance had significantly increased so I asked how the test was done the church warden explained that the tester had stuck some "tent pegs" in the graveyard and tested to the downlead test point he was asked why he didn't test at the rod in the inspection pit and the reply was it didn't matter where you test the fail cert and quote arrived a few days later the quote was to install a 600 x 600 copper lattice mat encased in marconite earthing compound at a cost of £660.20 + VAT which sounded extremely cheap to me for the cost of the materials and the labour. So a day or so later I had a spare hour in the afternoon and went to the church with my earth rod test kit the result at the downlead was much the same as on the cert but testing at the rod the resistance was 8.2Ω, testing from the rod to the downlead test point gave little or no continuity. The church warden raised a complaint with the testing company about their test methods and they sent out their compliance manager who after testing again agreed with me and told the church warden that he needed to modify and update their procedures and make changes to the training manual so this didn't happen in future, they sent another quote for reconnecting the downlead to the rods of £250 + VAT which I thought was a bit expensive for no more than 400mm of copper tape and a small excavation 50mm wide and 150mm deep after talking it through with the church warden I told him I would install the tape as I felt the contractor could no longer be trusted so about 10 days ago I had finshed a job early and went and dug to install the new tape the strange thing was having dug a little bit of tarmac and into some cement I found a piece of loose copper tape that was connected to the rods but had never been connected to the downlead so it now begs the question how long it had been like this and why it had never been picked up before but then again having now looked at the rest of the LPS and the state it is in and a lack of a complete set of results for each yearly test it is clear that it has never been tested and reported properly for (if you pardon the expression) god knows how long
While not so specialist back in December 2019 it was the EICR carried out by an NICEIC contractor recommended by the Wigan church group it was a total farce had 2 observations one of which wasn't valid as no switches on socket outlets isn't worthy of mention off the top of my head I could think of 5 or 6 things that didn't get mentioned. I ended up with three and a half days work for 2 of us which amounted to 2½ pages of remedials to sort out not including getting the DNO in to replace the double pole fused service head and all the 951 earth clamps on the PILC incomer. After I had fixed all that I had a look through the available PIR's / EICR's since 2000 the last decent PIR was back in 2004 / 2005 when a lot of remedials were done since then they all looked like copies and even the 2005 one was questionable with some of the issues we found in 2019 / 2020
Back then the church warden had been informed that the group overseeing the Wigan churches had created a list of preferred contractors that they expected the churches to use, while I was fixing the LPS issues I was asked to book in the next EICR for January I asked about the preferred contractor thing and was told that following the LPS testing issues he had done away with all that nonsense at a recent church wardens meeting
My last experience installing LP Systems was 30+ years ago and testing them on comms sites was just over 20 years ago where I found a number of supposedly certified LP systems that did not meet the necessary requirements to give a clean bill of health and issue a cert so contractors not delivering is not new
So how many more of these "specialist contractors" are failing to live upto the customers perceived expectation that they are getting the correct and proper testing and certification and meeting their duty of care. Until someone with some knowledge questions what these contractors are doing when they are on site they will carry on regardless and get away with it
The most recent one was at the local church my wife is on the PCC and since the church warden found out I was an electrician a few years ago I get asked to review some of the testing work carried out at the church
This year it was the lightning conductor test it returned a fail and the church warden asked for my opinion as last year and extra rod was installed to bring the rod resistance down below the required 10Ω the installation of this rod certainly didn't follow the recommendations but the resistance was brought down to just below 8Ω so it was ok, so this year the test was carried out and returned a reading of 164Ω which rang some alarm bells with the church warden so I was asked for my opinion as to why the resistance had significantly increased so I asked how the test was done the church warden explained that the tester had stuck some "tent pegs" in the graveyard and tested to the downlead test point he was asked why he didn't test at the rod in the inspection pit and the reply was it didn't matter where you test the fail cert and quote arrived a few days later the quote was to install a 600 x 600 copper lattice mat encased in marconite earthing compound at a cost of £660.20 + VAT which sounded extremely cheap to me for the cost of the materials and the labour. So a day or so later I had a spare hour in the afternoon and went to the church with my earth rod test kit the result at the downlead was much the same as on the cert but testing at the rod the resistance was 8.2Ω, testing from the rod to the downlead test point gave little or no continuity. The church warden raised a complaint with the testing company about their test methods and they sent out their compliance manager who after testing again agreed with me and told the church warden that he needed to modify and update their procedures and make changes to the training manual so this didn't happen in future, they sent another quote for reconnecting the downlead to the rods of £250 + VAT which I thought was a bit expensive for no more than 400mm of copper tape and a small excavation 50mm wide and 150mm deep after talking it through with the church warden I told him I would install the tape as I felt the contractor could no longer be trusted so about 10 days ago I had finshed a job early and went and dug to install the new tape the strange thing was having dug a little bit of tarmac and into some cement I found a piece of loose copper tape that was connected to the rods but had never been connected to the downlead so it now begs the question how long it had been like this and why it had never been picked up before but then again having now looked at the rest of the LPS and the state it is in and a lack of a complete set of results for each yearly test it is clear that it has never been tested and reported properly for (if you pardon the expression) god knows how long
While not so specialist back in December 2019 it was the EICR carried out by an NICEIC contractor recommended by the Wigan church group it was a total farce had 2 observations one of which wasn't valid as no switches on socket outlets isn't worthy of mention off the top of my head I could think of 5 or 6 things that didn't get mentioned. I ended up with three and a half days work for 2 of us which amounted to 2½ pages of remedials to sort out not including getting the DNO in to replace the double pole fused service head and all the 951 earth clamps on the PILC incomer. After I had fixed all that I had a look through the available PIR's / EICR's since 2000 the last decent PIR was back in 2004 / 2005 when a lot of remedials were done since then they all looked like copies and even the 2005 one was questionable with some of the issues we found in 2019 / 2020
Back then the church warden had been informed that the group overseeing the Wigan churches had created a list of preferred contractors that they expected the churches to use, while I was fixing the LPS issues I was asked to book in the next EICR for January I asked about the preferred contractor thing and was told that following the LPS testing issues he had done away with all that nonsense at a recent church wardens meeting
My last experience installing LP Systems was 30+ years ago and testing them on comms sites was just over 20 years ago where I found a number of supposedly certified LP systems that did not meet the necessary requirements to give a clean bill of health and issue a cert so contractors not delivering is not new
So how many more of these "specialist contractors" are failing to live upto the customers perceived expectation that they are getting the correct and proper testing and certification and meeting their duty of care. Until someone with some knowledge questions what these contractors are doing when they are on site they will carry on regardless and get away with it
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