Who may work on an electrical installation?

[murdock]

dont worry 123...i have been in this electrical industry for 27 years and i am just as confused...where you are lucky is there is no control over the industry so you can do what ever blows your hair back...just dont get caught...which is highly unlikely because the dept of labour doesnt have any mapower to carry out inspection so they have handed the resposibility over to the AIA who from my little experience with them are just as crooked as the contractors themselves...and in kzn there isnt even an AIA so they hand over the resposiblily to brian bilton form the eca...who look after the interest of the contractor so you would be ok...and brians attitude seems to be...what is all the fuss about from the last report i handed to him.

[123]

Spoke to a guy Pieter Loubscher at DOL, 012 309 4682 (Direct Line).

He told me that although I am a qualified electrician, I am not allowed to work on anything else except single phase systems, I have to work under supervision of an IE or MIE for anything else.

Apparently the term "qualified electrician" tested and passed at Olifantsfontein means nothing. The fact that I have been tested, and passed on, three phase systems, installation work, wiring and faultfinding, transformers (also three phase) means buckall.

As there is now way I will work "under" anyone except my customer, he basically denied me the right to work for myself and told me that what I am doing (to work) is illegal.

I cannot wait to see when this will end up in a constitutional court or something. You cannot create a law that is unconstitutional and the same law ensures that if i am a qualified electrician, i can do electrical work.

or am i missing something?

By the way, i was told exactly the same story by the ECB, and they even quoted the IER2009.

[murdock]

you must be taking about the new law everyone is talking about where you have to monitor the installation from day one otherwise you are not allowed to sign it over...honestly do you think they wll ever be able to enforce this law...lets get real.

dave will have to close his electrical side of his bussines down because how on this earth will you be able to do COC when the property is sold if you didnt monitor the installation.

the next problem is where do they plan on finding all these IE and MIE to monitor all the contruction work from the beginning.

they dont have the manpower to monitor electrical industry....so who is gona police it the AIA...they dont even have a registered AIA in KZN.

what they gona do drop the pass rate to 10 % so that more people can become MIEs?

this industry just gets more pathetic by the day

i would like to see a response from Pieter Loubsher how they plan on moving forward with this industry.

I spoke to chris greager and even he feel helpless and he is the national director for the ECA SA.

[Jacques#1]

Spoke to a guy Pieter Loubscher at DOL, 012 309 4682 (Direct Line).

He told me that although I am a qualified electrician, I am not allowed to work on anything else except single phase systems, I have to work under supervision of an IE or MIE for anything else.

I thnk he may have misunderstood you. If you are a qualified electrician who qualified @ Olifants tested on 3 phase then you are not a single phase tester, but an "installation" electrician (IE)......you can work on 3 phase just not on hazardous areas (MIE), and you can monitor a single phase tester.

Maybe I am missing something reading these threads, but as far as I know, you register at the ECB as an electrical contractor and thats it. A contractor must be monitored by someone who is a specialist in his field which would be the qualified guy...i.e. you. You are now 100% legal. To issue a COC you register at the ECB as an installation electrician?? and thats it? What did I miss.....

[Jacques#1]

you must be taking about the new law everyone is talking about where you have to monitor the installation from day one otherwise you are not allowed to sign it over...honestly do you think they wll ever be able to enforce this law...lets get real.

I agree with you thats gonna be a headache, but I try to understand where they are coming from. I did fault finding on a site a while back which was wired by a guy (qualified) with his team. I tried to figure out why the lights was not working, and.........they never pulled the wire lying in the roof on top of the db down the conduit and wired it up. I was not surprised.

I disagree with them that they require you to be on site 100% of the time. Doing conduit or wiring work labourers/semi skilled guys can still mess up, but they won't endanger someones life. As long as the electrician (the qualified guy) does all the connections and or inspects the connections before the boxes are closed up. You can tell if the job is right by looking at the connections....wire size, colour, wires vs. installed equipment etc.

The OHS Act supercedes any other acts where safety is concerned. In the OHS ACT you can make someone else i.e. the qualified electrician responsible for what happens on site (given you follow the rules)

[123]

ps I only registered as a SPT to issue the odd Coc on residential houses. But now it seems to me that I am not allowed to work as an electrician, which is the only trade I have. Or does my trade means zero at this stage?

Hi Jacques, no I am registered as a SPT at the DOL/ECB, not as an IE or MIE. I wrote the installation rules, and passed, in 1987.

One of the requirements for registering as an IE at the DOL in 2002 was the exam results of papers 1 & 2. 15 Years passed at the time when I requested my exam results from FET College. It is now 2010. Nothing.

Which left only one option open, SPT, which I did. (2002).

Which brings me to my original problem: I am not allowed to work on anything else except single phase installations, according to DOL.

God knows what will be the case if I was not registered as an SPT! I would not be legally allowed to work at all! I was under the impression that if you are a qualified electrician with trade test papers, you are legally allowed to work on electricity? (Artikel 13(12) van die Wet op Mannekrag Opleiding, 1981)

In conclusion, I (and thousands more) have effectively been regulated out of a job, a livelihood, a means to provide for my family, which, if tested in a court, could face some serious challenges i would imagine.

Regards-Christo

pse excuse the english-i am dutchman.

[murdock]

qualifying at olifants as an electrician makes you an electrician...not a spt or IE or MIE

which means you can be employed by a registered company and work on any electrical installation...provided the installation is designed an monitored and inspected by the correctly qualified person.

becoming a spt means you can then start a bussiness and register with the ecb as a spt and carry out work and test single phase installations.

them if you decide to become an IE...you need to make sure all the requirements to become an IE are completed sent into the DOL and if they accept your aplication...they will send you notification with a certificate...you can then register with the ecb as an IE...you can then... if self employed start doing work and inspections on 3 phase systems.

then lastly to the same applies for an MIE...do all the requirements to become an MIE once approved...you can then register with the ecb and work on and carry out inspections.

i am sitting with a problem at the moment where the factory electrician carrys out all installation work and fault finding...i have since found out that he is not an electrician but a millwright...my problem is not the fault finding its the installation work...he hasnt a clue on electrical design and selection of equipment or cabling...but because there is nobody to check up on him he can do whatever he wants...but heres the catch and i dont think the company owner knows this...if there is an accident and someone is injured and found that there was negligance on the part of the electrician who is not suppose to be doing what he is doing the owner becomes liable for everything and will be held accountable...not the millwright...becuase he has not taken the correct precautions to ensure that the correctly qulaified people carry out the work he becomes guilty...unless the millwright lied about his qualifications and told him he is an IE...all the work they do is 3 phase...they have asked me to sign over work in the building...

i decided to rather walk away...unless they are prepared to spend the money and do a design check on the entire installtion...otherwise what happens when something goes wrong...everyone points the finger at me and says "BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER WHY DIDNT YOU TELL US ABOUT ALL THESE PROBLEMS" words still echoing in my head...thrown at me on a previous occassion...i unfortunatley have been burnt with this before....once burnt twice shy...unfortunatley my MIE status puts the food on the table for my family...without it are they gona feed me...yeah right.

a big factory like that should at least have a design engineer on a part time basis or as a consultanting engineer overseeing new machines being installed etc...there are boilers...chemicals you name it.

[murdock]

passing the installation rules exam doesnt qualify you as an IE...there are various other requirements which need to be done before you can apply to become an IE as mentioned on this website in other threads.

i have mate who has a similar problem because he has been working in the aircon game for the past 20 years and now the DOL have clamped down on him to register because they care doing the elctrical installtion part of the aircon installtion...he did his IE exam but never follwed through.

[Dave A]

I've been led to understand the key phrase in this is "under the general supervision" and this does not imply continuous "on-site supervision".

Apparently the term "qualified electrician" tested and passed at Olifantsfontein means nothing. The fact that I have been tested, and passed on, three phase systems, installation work, wiring and faultfinding, transformers (also three phase) means buckall.

Not quite - you can use it to qualify to sit the IE exam.

As there is now way I will work "under" anyone except my customer, he basically denied me the right to work for myself and told me that what I am doing (to work) is illegal.

I've always been amazed at how the crowd that says "the law is preventing me from earning a living" change their tune when they actually meet the requirements of the law. It doesn't take long before the very same people are going "the law isn't being applied strictly enough"

I'm not trying to knock anyone by saying that - it's just that the situation is not unique to the electrical contracting industry; I've seen it time and time again in the pest control industry too. I've come to accept that's it's just human nature and the real problem is that people don't know what they don't know - until they've been exposed to it.

Ultimately, you have to ask whether the law is appropriate, and I'd like to quietly suggest you might well realise the law is appropriate once you've got your IE ticket under your belt.

[123]

"I've always been amazed at how the crowd that says "the law is preventing me from earning a living" change their tune when they actually meet the requirements of the law. It doesn't take long before the very same people are going "the law isn't being applied strictly enough"

True words spoken truthfully.

Ultimately, you have to ask whether the law is appropriate, and I'd like to quietly suggest you might well realise the law is appropriate once you've got your IE ticket under your belt.

Thing is, I am on the wrong side of forty, staring 50 smack in the face
I cannot see myself attending classes and writing exams at this stage. and still support my family at the same time. (No work, No Food).

which means you can be employed by a registered company and work on any electrical installation...provided the installation is designed an monitored and inspected by the correctly qualified person.

That is exactly what I would like to see being tested in a court. The "WORK" part of the equation. The regulations should be in place to ensure that the WORK that was done is according to SANS 10142-1. The correctly accredited person who inspects the job should ensure that the work was done according to such standards. Who is not necessarily the person who has done the job. Many inspections which is done is on work done, NOT by the person inspecting it, but he still issues a CoC if all is according to sans 10142.

So, if I understand it correctly, the accredited person cannot issue a CoC because he did not do, or supervise (control) all the work done on the installation! So what now? You get called out to issue a CoC on an installation, you did not do the work yourself or controlled/supervised the person who did it, how on earth can you legally issue the CoC?

The "only registered persons can work on an installation" part will put many people out of a job, something they might not take too quietly.

[Dave A]

There is a difference between doing all the work and all the work being done under the general supervision...

Thing is, I am on the wrong side of forty, staring 50 smack in the face

I don't understand the problem. The brain doesn't normally go until much later

Like so many things, when the motivation is there the obstacles disappear.

[Jacques#1]

The COC allows for the guy who specified the work, tested the work, the main contracting company who hired the guy to test the work, did the work, bought the spares etc.....

If you didn't do the actual installation or design/spec the job, than those sections of the COC remains blank, you just do an honest test on the installation to make sure its safe. So, the COC allows you not to have done the work, just test it after the fact.

[Dave A]

Should an electricity supplier be connecting a new installation based on a "test only" COC?

[Jacques#1]

Well.......I guess it depends who wrote the COC?

I open every socket outlet, every light switch, every joint box, I do climb in the roof and inspect all the joints/geyser hookup/isolator, open the DB and do insulation test, loop impedence, PSCC, resistance test, continuity, E/L test etc............

I Fill in a checksheet I made that checks all the major points in the book, including things like colour coding, wire to CB sizing, labelling etc.

On this basis I would say that the guy who does the test knows the installation (apart from hidden things), and the supplier could most probably, plus minus, almost, connect on this basis .

[Jacques#1]

you asked a retorical question right?.......I missed it