I have to agree with the comments about Qualifications and courses, there are far too many of them and in the words of the song, 'it's all about the money' .
they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and we all know how true that saying is, yet how many people out there do a short course in something and then consider themselves an expert! Yet a lot of these people still come out with stupid things like, 'that's illegal because it doesn't comply with BS7671', I'm slowly learning, it must be my age lol not to engage with idiots who make stupid comments, but do occasionally still bite at the bait
I recently spent a good 30 minutes explaining to one of these individuals that nothing in BS7671 was enforceable in law and that while it may be used as a guide, any prosecution would most likely be under something such at the EAWR or some other such regulation, it went well over his head, well that's another half hour of my life I will never get back, lol.
Recently I was looking at some old books, both mine and some others I was left by Tony, it was sad to see just how much us older electricians were taught and epected to deal with as part of our normal job and has now become classed as specialist . Also just how much more tools and equipment is used these days in comparison to back then, I remember starting off and we had a megger and a test lamp, that was about it, a lot of lads had a continuity tester made out of a bell, a battery and some bits of wire, yet we still managed to repair stuff and find faults, if you worked for a bigger firm they often had an AVO, only one, which you could take out to a job only after signing a paper stating that in the event of you losing or breaking it you'd commit hari kari!
Look at the kit the modern spark carries, now I know times have moved on and a lot of stuff is in use now that wasn't back then, RCD's for example, but as regards general day to day fault finding, on most stuff it's still the same old faults yet modern sparks seem to need an ever growing number of testers to fine a fault that we'd find armed only with a megger and a bell set. I know a lot of us older sparks get fed up with the constant comment, from certain people, 'well it's only a few wires', which in essence is all our job is about. However for me, the two important bits to our job are A) 'throwing in' the right size 'wires' in the right way, and B) knowing what to do when having 'thrown in' the said wires, it doesn't work!
I remember some years ago going for an interview for a job at a local electrical contractors, they'd been in the area as long as electricity and the firm was run by three brothers. It was typical of the old what I call 'mill owner' mentality, every morning the lads would have to assemble in the office and 'doff their caps' so to speak as they told them how grateful they were to be in their employ.
I attended the interview with the 3 bosses, me on one side of a a large table, them on the other, ' it's nothing special, just slinging cables in on some newbuild houses' one of them said, in a rather matter of fact manner. Personally I think it was an attempt to justify why they were one of the worst payers in the area, I was only there myself as it was hard to find work at the time. Another brother then decided to throw a few questions at me, culminating with one, that always stays with me, 'if you were wiring an 18Kw load, what size cable would you use'? I thought for a second then replied that I couldn't answer, I hadn't got enough information. He provided me with the info needed and I worked out the answer in a minute or two, he then offered me the job!
I said I'd be happy to accept but there was one thing he should know beforehand, for the money they were offering I wouldn't be doing any more cable calcs, I would only be 'slinging in a few cables' I took the job, but only stayed a couple of months, it turned out that most of the other lads were capable of little else beyond slinging in a few cables, and most of my time was spent sorting out other peoples problems. I think that was the begining of the end of the 'proper spark', Nowadays there seems to be a plethora of sparks who are barely out of their initial training and the next thing they are doing whatever it is they now call the old 2391, and are running around doing I&T, with very little practical experience or working knowledge of the installations they are testing.
It seems to me that we are in a race to the bottom these days, the only thing that seems to matter is how much money can be extracted from someone in their quest to become an 'electrician', sadly their actual abilities and knowledge seem to be of little or no importance, as I said earlier, 'it's all about the money' !
