NICEIC Annual Visit

Video Transcript

Hi everybody, it’s Danny from Pro Electrical. Today I’m going to take you through a quick little look at things from our annual NICEIC visit. It went really well actually. Everyone who does the NICEIC visit, the majority of people would say it’s a scary day. We’ve done it for 11 years now. And nothing really changes, it’s the same principles.

We go through testing routines, we go through our admin. We go through and make sure we’re doing the Part P’s, our test sheets are good, good quality, good test results and so on. But it’s always a nerve wracking day for any company, I believe. Especially as the Q, it’s all on you really that day.

You’re going to sites that maybe you might not have time to go to so much because obviously the roles in the company change. And it’s very much that we rely on our staff to do a good job and we try our best and generally everyone does a very good job. We have a new guy as well which made it even more interesting this year. We still have a guy called Paul, very methodical, you know, knows everything, even knows stuff about my family that he keeps notes on in his little book.But I think he’s going into retirement. So hence the assessor Guy called me. Really good guy, down to earth, normal. And it made me feel a bit more relaxed. Because as I say, it’s a nerve wracking day, you feel like the business is on the line that one day.

It’s not though, because if you did fail, you get a revisit, but we’ve never had one. We’ve never had any majors. You know, we try very hard to do the right thing at the right time and the right admin and the right paperwork. And our compliance is something we’re trying to constantly improve every week at the moment.

So, obviously it’s working because this year I felt it was a lot more structured, it was a lot more organised, I was a lot more prepared for it. It was an easy visit because we had everything in place.

One of the main things he did pick up on, we spoke about AFDD, the cost of them for people to start using them, and the cost is going to have to come down.

Some people will use them, in certain situations, in certain buildings. Once every contractor is buying them, well, the cost has to come down. In the end, the consumer can’t afford them at the moment. I think the last time I looked, they were £150 to £160 each.

He spoke about an amendment coming out possibly in 18 months time. And he didn’t say when, he just said it would, you know, probably be coming out. That would mean a new load of books that we’d have to go and buy because the other ones would be out of date. The main thing we spoke about, which I think is going to be quite hard for most companies to do, is CPD training. Not for myself, that’s the easy bit because I can do that, and I do a lot of it.

We have to do a minimum of 10 hours per year and record it. My problem is I didn’t record it. So we’ve done it on the day. It wasn’t a problem. But we’ve got to do it for every electrician that works for us, which is great. We are constantly doing it because we’re doing stuff new every day, but its trying to record it.

So, I suppose for me, it’s going to take more time to get everyone together to do it together, to read an article, to read the publication, to do some training.

One of our brand partners came in and talked to our team. I Hope Hager will do it soon, because we’ve just started using Hager products, which are very impressive. I don’t know why we didn’t do it a long time ago. But other than that I think that’s been the main challenge. And as well, you know, I’m hoping the guys can embrace it, want to learn it.

It’s just trying to fit it around the constant workload that we do. So I’m sure it’ll be fine. But overall, good visit, another year done. I’m just down at the stores at the moment because we’re just trying to structure our stuff. And we’ve got job boxes for jobs.

We’ve stuck in an accessory range now, which is good. Which is data, one of our brand partners and cable rack and just trying to make sure everything’s in order. Obviously, we use a project management software. It’s got a storage facility on it.

So, for us a good start to the week. I hope you’re having a good week. Hopefully you can learn something from these videos I’m doing and you’re enjoying the journey of Prowired Electrical. And hopefully one day I can look back and it was all worthwhile. So thanks very much everybody. Have a great week and I look forward to seeing you soon.