what would you do?

Been asked to do an EICR on a large medical practice, now I'm ok with the actual I&T side of it but there are other issues bothering me, just wondering what your thoughts are. A few years back they rang up in a panic, it was midway through afternoon surgery, the place was full and they lost all power. There was no lighting, no computers,phones,power, absolutely nothing.

Fortunately for them I was in the supermarket around the corner so I was on scene in less than 5 minutes and within 10 minutes had power restored.The problem was water on an electric kettle base, this tripped the RCD, The problem was that the supply is 3 phase to a 12 way TPN board,with and RCD on the main incomer, there are no 3 phase loads and the board is fully populated,so that's 36 single phase circuits.

I was asked what could be done to prevent this happening again and as it's an obsolete board, my only solution was to replace it with a new one using RCBO'S. If I remember correctly I think I quoted £2000 for the work, it was deemed too costly! there are other issues involved here also, the vaccine fridges are fed from this board, the alarms on them are GSM based and whoever has set them up has used PAYG sim cards, again probably for cheapness, the problem is they are the type where if the credit isn't used by the end of the month it expires, as you can expect it's expired and not been replaced, so they have no alarms!

I'm worried about the consequences of doing the EICR on these premises, I know that when I list the issues on the cert, in particular the fact that the one RCD covering everything is a non compliance( there's no reason for this as it's a tns system) they will take no action regarding having the issue corrected, and while I don't think they'd have any legal come back on me if it all went wrong, it could damage my reputation. I just have this feeling that if there was an issue, they'd try and say I didn't warn them of the severity of the problem. My instinct tells me to beat a hasty retreat on this one, what's your opinion please.

Just wondering if this comes under MEIGaN Regulations?

Do you have PI insurance?

Murdoch said:

Do you have PI insurance?

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Yes, but you know when you get the feeling someones looking to try something on? A few years back they got another guy to do an EICR on another branch, he charged them for doing a load of work that imo was not required, basically he told them that an EICR had to be clear, and a lot of things needed changing, one of them being the bonds to gas and water mains(they were 6mm), which given the age of the building was to be expected, in a nutshell, he inspected a building that was wired to an earlier version of the regs then told them that to have an EICR on it it would have to be brought up to 17th edition standard, in other words a con job!

I used to do quite a bit of work for them, then obviously someone else became 'flavour of the month' and they dropped me, now for some reason they want me back.I know work is work and we're all in it to make money, but I have a feeling something is going on here and I don't fancy getting caught up in it all, they seem to be very lax about doing things unless they are pushed and I'm wondering if something has gone on that I don't know about and they need the EICR as some kind of 'get out of jail card'.

As we all know, an EICR is a report on the condition of the installation, not a certificate saying it is safe. I've noticed recently that the place has a lot of NHS logo's on it and am wondering if that has anything to do with it.

Recently we repaired a fairly expensive piece of medical equipment for them, replacement cost was around £800, despite the fact we had it back within a couple of days, and the fact they had a spare unit,they went and ordered a new one, the repair came in at £50, so effectively they wasted all that money on a new unit which wasn't needed, yet they hold off on replacing light fittings or having the mains board sorted out.

The last time I was in only half the lamps in the grid fittings were working, the practice manager had removed 2 out of the 4 tubes in each fitting to save electricity!

Want to borrow a bargepole?

If you want to tell them it's not right, even though it complies, write an additional report with recommendations - and keep a copy.

cheers, Paul

They sound like a PITA. As always, if you have nothing better to do then go for it. It's all on paper, if you test it then there isn't any obligation for you to rectify anything and they cannot blame you for any issues as you are just testing what is there.

They don't sound very dissimilar to most businesses IME, so it doesn't sound like they are trying to pull a fast one, they are just averagely/normally useless.

so recommend replacing RCd with main switch (assuming you can get a main switch to fit) and putting socket circuits, where needed on RCBOs / RCd external to board if necessary. I've done work for various doctors surgeries, they 'flip flop' something terrible. Management by committee!

PPP said:

If you want to tell them it's not right, even though it complies, write an additional report with recommendations - and keep a copy.

cheers, Paul

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Basically this., Its dificult to describe a problem fully on the page on the EICR unless its something like "Reception area - Socket damaged adj to main etrance (C2)" or smilar. If you want do go into detail about a problem, what the potential risks are, perhaps include a couple o photgraphs to show the issues, make recommendations on how it could be fixed then you could make the report out in a word document and on the eicr form fault list just write "See attached report". Once you explain the issue clearly then ball is in their court

binky said:

so recommend replacing RCd with main switch (assuming you can get a main switch to fit) and putting socket circuits, where needed on RCBOs / RCd external to board if necessary. I've done work for various doctors surgeries, they 'flip flop' something terrible. Management by committee!

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Decided not to get involved with it, can't get new mainswitch, or rcbo's as board is obsolete and putting external rcd,s in would be a pita. At the end of the day if they don't want to spend money to have a job done properly let someone else have it.

fair enough. I have jobs like that sometimes, like a certain builder who only phones me when he's in the ****e, and the company that paid someone else to install solar panles, once told me I was £50 dearer than A.N.Other for an EICR so I didn't get the job ( he didn't test everything FFs), but phone me when these 'others' have disappeared and want me to fix the firk-ups. S' funny, I seem to be too busy :slap