I also have Professional indemnity insurance especially where in my capacity advise is given.
This also covers me in the event of failure of alarm systems to operate properly if I make a mistake in the initial installation.
However I have never needed to claim, but it is there should I ever need it.
I have 10 million public liability, this is because some of my work is in high sector areas where organisations such as hospitals, schools and local authorities will ask for higher public liability insurance.
I have never made any claim against any work I have done, and my H&S policy and method statements are very clear and precise so every operative knows every procedure when doing any kind of work.
Periodic Inspection Reports requires you to be fully aware and experianced in the type of installation to be tested.
If your a DI it is no good doing a pir on a three phase 250amp supply if you have had no experiance of installing them in the first place.
Your testing experiance will come into force when you receive results that are outside what you would expect, there may be some very simple logical reasons for spurious results, that can only be dismissed or investigated when experiance has shown in the past what causes these "odd" results.
As the regulations state you can do any pir on any installation providing you are competant, there are many ways to prove your competancy, being a member of a regulatory body for example,or having the industry recognised testing certificate, or a thourogh knowledge of the type of installation to be tested.
This last requirement is a kind of get out clause inbuilt into the regulations.
For example if you have no formal training or qualifications, yet you install three phase supplies and have done for the last 30 years, it would be safe to assume you would know all there is to know about this type of installation.
If you carry out such installations in accordance with the regulations, and test accordingly you have complied with every regulation.
In court I do not think any electrical engineer could give counter evidence as to your competancy given experiance and your knowledge, built over time.
However I always make sure I am fully covered just for that special day when something is missed, that as a competant person I should have seen or detected.
Never happened yet, but thats because everything is double checked.
