Interesting Debates.
EICR Reports the true cost?
I have been involved with some interesting debates in the past two weeks, in respect of the new EICR reports, which replaced the periodic / fixed wire reports, as of January 2012.
As an independent test and inspection engineer, with over 50 years of experience, in the testing of domestic, commercial, and industrial installations, I have carried out thousands of EICR reports over the Decades.
It never ceases to amaze me, how often managers, FM managers, director’s owners, and large corporations try to get this type of work done for the cheapest price possible, EICR Reports are not a bargain basement cost-cutting exercise they are a life safety report, when don correctly.
So, let’s just take an example of, say a standard three-bed house, and truly break down the costs involved in carrying out EICR Reports
- Overheads, so people can find you, such as “advertising, telephone, broadband, e-mail, etc.”
- Normal running costs, vehicle, road tax, vehicle insurance, (diesel), public liability insurance, professional indemnity insurance, membership, such as (N.I.C.E.I.C., CHAS, construction line), and so many more.
- Re-examination/retraining costs to ensure that you are conversant with the latest regulations.
- Calibration costs, for all your test instruments, sometimes biannually, due to the amount of use.
- Leave the office to go to a job, somewhere between 30 and 60 min.
- Set up and go around the property taking a full visual inspection, taking readings, and results, removing sockets switches light fittings, dismantling the fuse board, taking all the necessary readings as required along with noting any defects on average anywhere between 2 to 4 hours or longer it depends on what the inspector finds on-site depending on the number of items found.
- Leave the job and go back to the office, somewhere between 30 and 60 min to travel.
- Start filling out paperwork, old periodic 5 to 6 pages, new E.I.C.R 10 to 14 pages +, depending on what you find, approximate time to complete every item now needs to be ticked, and write all comments, 2 to 3 hours.
So, let’s add this up, forgetting the costs involved in items 1 to 4 because customers don’t ever see that! let’s just go with items 5 to 8 if you assume 30 min both ways. which are very conservative doesn’t even include parking or congestion charging. If you are in a place like London, which has reached epidemic proportions.
Your average time spent doing just that one job, from start to finish. If you do it properly, it is 7 to 10 hours.
As you can see, the Cowboys that do this type of work, who arrived at say 9 AM and are gone by 10:30 AM, having already completed the paperwork within that time, can in no way be doing the job properly, or safely, it’s a worthless piece of toilet paper.
Yet their charges range, from £50-£120 to do the work, when the real cost, is anywhere between £250.00 and £500.00, plus VAT, for a day’s work, depending on what you find, the more that’s wrong the longer it takes.
Unfortunately, the public; and I don’t like using this word are blissfully “ignorant” and assume that once they have the piece of paper everything is okay, it’s not your fault, you are hoodwinked by cheap loss-leader costs there are pages of them on the Internet just so they can get through the door.
It has been my experience over many decades of having to re-attend these jobs, only to find numerous items that were never picked up properly because it was never inspected only tested i.e. not properly and to give the customer the bad news that they now have to spend even more money than they had any idea about, leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
Quite often I and many other competent contractors are the ones that receive the attack because they went to a cheap outfit that often can no longer be found, or hides behind rigmarole, to try and justify what they have not done.
So when you get estate agents that quote anywhere between £60 and £120 to carry out a “proper report” remember one thing, their estate agents, are not competent testers and legally they are responsible for what they say! they add a percentage sometimes over 10% to a testing contractor’s costs, for the privilege of finding someone for you.
You don’t get a butcher, to carry out brain surgery, so why on earth do you get cheap people to carry out an Electrical Inspection?
They don’t know what they’re doing produce half-hearted reports that leave you in a dangerous situation, and quite often are gone within three months, and as for the cheap testing houses, cheap tests high remedial’s, and this is not just my opinion.
If you run your car to the corner shop once a week for half a mile and then come back your servicing costs would be 2-4 years apart!
If you run your car around the M25, at 70 mph, five days a week, your servicing would be biannual or more and anywhere between £300-£600, each time, yet you pay without question? but the loads and use of your systems have increased over the decades far beyond their capacity to deal with it without maintenance! and or upgrades, which include safety upgrades.
When asked to check the safety of your home, against electrical dangers, many scream and shout about paying up to £250-500 plus VAT, if you live in your property, this test is required by your insurance once every 10 years, or you are not insured, which as you can see amounts to £25-50 a year! you will spend more than that on coffee and cake in a month.
You will spend up to £6000+ in 10 years servicing a vehicle that depreciates down to a worthless piece of junk the moment it touches the tarmac, yet when asked to spend £250-500, once every 10 years you scream that it is too much, and always look for the cheap option, on an asset that increases in value.
Don’t you think it is time that you started the value your lives and your family’s lives above the cost of the car?
For further information, please go to www.safe-electric.com and contact us, for it is far better to know there is a problem, and then fix it.