PAT Testing 2500 items

[Starbuck]

Hi Ive been asked to quote to PAT test 2500 items.

Normally I don't do this sort of thing but the quantity makes it attractive.

What ball park figure would you quote - I'm thinking about

 

[Andy™]

I'm thinking about

 

[kme]

And most big companies who quote for these jobs come in at about 30-50 pence per item Don`t ask how; no-one knows of a way to do the job properly, at that price, and make a profit (or indeed break even!)

KME

 

[Starbuck]

Thanks for your comments lads.

The thing that makes the job attractive is thats its less than 2miles from my home. And they want the majority of the work done in the night - which is fine for me.

I do think there is scope for profit at

 

[Theorysparky]

2 1/2 weeks work ????

 

[Andy™]

if its out of hours, then you should be charging more

 

[Cirrus]

As KME said - 30 - 50pence per item. I do work as a preferred supplier to a large hotel chain and they asked me to quote on PAT testing for them. I asked what they pay currently and was told around the 70 pence mark!

 

[NozSpark]

Starbuck,

there are loads of threads on this, but consider...

how many items could you physically test in an hour (including completing the forms)

what are your overheads for this kind of work going to be (cost of tester, labels, fuses, etc)

how much per hour do you need/want to earn

personally I charge

 

[Stevie h]

I think if your experienced at PAtesting and have the right tester, you can test around 150 appliances a day ( properly tested ) , so

 

[Sidewinder]

You can fully inspect & test an appliance to the IET CoP including checking the plug & doing the paperwork in 3 mins & 12 seconds.

Even with a red hot tester that takes some doing.

Please elaborate!

 

[Evans Electric]

Different ways of looking at this one Starstruck , you will have to decide about the working at night bit, and do you charge more. Ideally you'd want

 

[sparkytim]

Depends what the appliance is and type of Plug top

For a Class 2 appliance with a molded Plug then 2 mins easy.

 

[Sidewinder]

tim,

it could take you that long to get the appliance id stuff recorded depending on where the appliance is!

 

[Larnacaman]

Agreed Sidewinder, ....that only works if the appliance to be tested has been previously bar-coded by your machine.

 

[Stevie h]

You can fully inspect & test an appliance to the IET CoP including checking the plug & doing the paperwork in 3 mins & 12 seconds.Even with a red hot tester that takes some doing.

Please elaborate!

Megger4 dv records all results in its hard drive then you can print out via power suite software which saves a loads of time, I normally write the stickers out the night before .. I'd say 150 per day is max , some dedicated pat test guys say they can do 300+ per day .... Impossible IMO

 

[Larnacaman]

Steve,

That's fine, if this is an ongoing contract, you have previous records.

But for each appliance ...you still need to let your PAT tester know what and where the appliance is. unless you have an existing appliance reference number or bar-coded reference your PAT tester recognises....

 

[Sidewinder]

Ahh, now that is cheating, because you are NOT covering all of your time, how long does it take to write out the stickers. That should be added to the time it takes you because it is a cost of the "job".

We all do it, but we should cost it in.

As I write this I have just hopped over to the forum from writing an engineering report for a customer, however, they pay for this in the rate they pay for my site work.

As has been suggested on other threads we are not a charity and we need to be profitable. We should NOT be subsidising our customers business!

 

[Stevie h]

Hi guys, yes the sticker writing in cheating abit , my tester is set up to my spec for speed , I type in a code ( c2r, c1r ) class 1 run , class 2 run and it performs the appropriate test, once I put a room location in , it assign's all items to this room until I change rooms , again this is to save home much data I need to input ... Don't really test any more as the prices are too low and it's boring as hell, rather be on the tools getting my hands dirty

Ste

Please excuse any bad grammar , writing this on my iPhone

 

[SPECIAL LOCATION]

Hi Ive been asked to quote to PAT test 2500 items.Normally I don't do this sort of thing but the quantity makes it attractive.

What ball park figure would you quote - I'm thinking about

 

[Apache]

MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT WORKING AS A BREAK_EVEN or LOSS BUSINESS MODEL!

Just to be controversial, if you were a new business and had no work, doing something at break even [or just above] to get your name out there and make a few quid to buy a tester MIGHT be in your better interests overall?

Goodwill does have a value, even if not monetary.........