Kevin Brennan, Minister of State for Further Education, Apprenticeship Skills and Consumer Affairs at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, recently made what some may see as a radical approach to increasing the skills sets amongst the M & E community at large.
The minister has said, at a recent industry gathering, that he was considering new rules which could be built into all future public sector projects, and which would stress the duty on contractors to invest in the training of staff and apprentices.
What this would mean in practice is still somewhat vague but our investigations suggest that any public sector building and second fixing contracts offered to tender by the government, local authorities and other public organisations will have clauses which will “stress” that all staff must have received some vocational training. The spokesperson went on to say that this might include nationally recognised qualifications as inclusions in any such clauses.
So there you have it…..another solid reason to get that all important qualification!
The Cowboys are back…..that is the Part P “Refusniks!”
With the economic downturn coming to a possible end soon, we must caution customers and clients alike, who are only to easily persuaded that a electrician who is able and ready to the work will do……..beware!
It’s not often that we have smoke pouring out of our ears, but I am afraid we really started to loose it recently when we chanced upon this little gem :
Our old friend the cowboy (yeeha) is back!!!!!!
In a nutshell, this so called electrician has carried out an electrical installation involving changing over an old re-wireable fuse board to a split load consumer unit……Now this is where the story gets interesting. The electrician in question claims that as he has the 16th edition, he is “part p qualified” – he admitted that he never informed building control! He went on (and my god, did he go on) “I went on a 1 day part p training course with a training company, and they told me that after attending the course, I was part p registered, so I really know what I am doing!”
When I heard about this one, I thought to myself, Part P is still seen by some in the industry as something to get around and isn’t to be taken seriously….remember, this chap has not carried out any of the tests detailed in Part 6 of the regs, let alone any of the processes described as Initial Verification; bearing in mind that any installation test certificates, schedules of tests etc, would of course be invalid under the current building regulations, of which official document “P” is one of several building regs to be adhered to……..