BS7671 electrical check

[AliG]

As my build progresses my house is about to go up for sale.

 

I had an extension built a few years ago, but the builder never applied for the completion certificate.

 

The council came round and I need the electrical sign off (Scottish scheme)

 

The electrician moved abroad, indeed the builder has also moved to America now, and the builder just could not get the certificate out of him.

 

Should I be OK just finding another electrician to inspect the work and sign it off? I was thinking of just putting it up on ratedpeople

[Nickfromwales]

I'd try word of mouth first tbh as if you put a help sign up and they realise your stuck your likely to get hammered. 

 

[AliG]

THat's what I was thinking. I just asked the contractor on the new place and he says he should be able to get a guy to do it.

 

It's been a real pain, I am not sure of the protocol, but basically every time I have had work done on the house it has all been finished as far as I can see but then they don't apply for the completion certificate and then when the council come to inspect I find some very minor thing hasn't been done and it is a real hassle to get small jobs done and get the certificate.

[Nickfromwales]

2 minutes ago, AliG said:

I just asked the contractor on the new place and he says he should be able to get a guy to do it.

??

[ProDave]

There is no such thing as "The Scottish Scheme" *

 

Unlike England and Wales, there is no "Part P" to the building regulations.  All that building control require for completion sign off is a Electrical Installation Certificate as defined in BS7671 

 

I have done this several times now in this situation of the original electrician either having gone AWOL, or (more likely?) never existed in the first place.

 

To solve this, you need to get an electrician to issue a "3 signature" version of the EIC form. This has one signature for design, one for installation, and one for inspection and testing.  I only ever sign the inspection and testing part of the form (I can't sign the other bits as I did not do them). I then tell the client to get the original installer to sign the other 2 parts.   I strongly suspect (with a nod and a wink) that those parts might (cough) not actually be signed by the person that did the original work.  But building control accept it. After all, they only want a bit of paper to say it is safe.

 

* Scotland tried to introduce a "Certificate of Conformity" scheme a number of years ago. As far as I can tell it fell flat on it's face. It was a purely optional scheme that if you registered with an approved body then by using a COC acredited tradesman, you got a very small reduction in the cost of the building warrant.  Because it was an optional scheme, and the costs of joining it were high, I never bothered.  I continue, just as I always have, to just issue an EIC and the three different council's who's areas I work in (Highland, Inverness-Shire and Moray), all still accept this for building control sign off.