Sparkies qualifications & courses

[Steven Briggs]

A question about electrician's qualifications and typical training. First some background, I'm a Chartered Electrical Engineer, who earns a living designing switch-mode industrial power kit, with an interest in the electrical installations side of things. Now in the current climate of "competent persons" and having the right piece of paper to prove one's competence, I thought I'd get a few relevant qualifications under my belt. (Part P anyone? ;-) ).

I managed to blag my way onto a C&G 2381 course (nearly complete, useful & interesting but a piece of cake). Now the local college is to run a C&G 2391 Inspection and Test course. Great I thought. But now the tutor says "you need to be qualified electrician for this course". "Not useful to you". Humbug.

I've (re)wired a few houses, seen plenty of heavy electrical stuff, and none of it is exactly rocket science. So in a 2-3 year BTEC/Whatever sparkies course, what do they really learn? Obviously lots of practical "craft" side of the job, but I presume from my experience of the 2381 that the technical stuff is very limited (P=IVcos(phase) was carefully explained for the hard of thinking....). Is the content 2381 & 2391 all included in the basic qualifications, or normally an extra?

Just trying to piece together an argument to let me do the course.

Cheers

[PoP]

I'd be interested to know which college that was. I'm not a qualified sparky but Bracknell college (walking distance for me) didn't raise that barrier when I enquired. I haven't done the course yet though.

As for Part P, this has been discussed several times on this forum. It's yet to be seen how and when this will get introduced. Best advice I've seen is to buy a load of reels of the black/red cable before the new wiring colours (blue/brown) hits the street. That way you can carry out wiring without certification for the next few years, and no-one will be any the wiser in terms of being able to spot new wiring.

Won't work on new houses built from when the new wiring colours are adopted though. And I suspect there will be a black market formed for supplying the old wiring colours :)

PoP

[Andy Hall]

Now there's a business opportunity.... Hmmm........

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[PoP]

I've already got a couple of reels......

PoP

[Steven Briggs]

In message , PoP writes

Ditto ;-)

I don't think the goods-in lad at work was too pleased having to cart 4 very heavy screwfix boxes round to my office.

[Christian McArdle]

It looks like the Part P may be sufficiently delayed to have a year or two of the new colours before it is implemented. Therefore, the "wiring colour" new work detection won't ever be a problem. Of course, everyone's wiring will all have been done in 2004 (or is it 2005?) for ever more.

Christian.