Training Ltd

We are now offering a low cost route to gaining the recognised City and Guilds 2377 award for PAT testing. PAT is the acronym for Portable Appliance Testing, or the safety testing of electrical devices that are, typically, plugged-into mains, or equivalent, electrical sockets. Although this is now well-known as PAT testing, the official name for this is 'In-service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment', and is based on the IEE Code of Practice for In-service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment.

PAT Testing is ideal for people who have a basic understanding of electrical theory, and a thorough and responsible approach to testing. It is an activity designed to ensure electrical safety and as such should be done by trained and competent people - see below for more information and special offers.

PAT Testing Interval

PAT testing is required at regular intervals on all mains voltage devices or their power leads for commercial premises whether they are offices, factories, holiday homes or residential care homes. The testing is designed to ensure that electrical equipment used in these environments is safe for workers, residents and the public. A common misconception is that PAT testing is an annual requirement, and this is reinforced by companies who just do annual PAT testing, whereas the correct interval is dependent on many factors and can vary from monthly to every few years.

PAT Testing demands a Competent Person

The requirement is that PAT testing is done by a competent person within the workplace, and the best way to prove a person is competent is by ensuring they have passed appropriate qualifications such as the City and Guilds 2377 qualification for staff carrying our portable appliance testing, or alternatively the equivalent qualification for those who are responsible for managing the application and process of PAT testing within workplaces.

If you employ a company to do PAT Testing for your business or organisation, we strongly advise that you demand to see thier City & Guilds 2377 qualification. Without this they may 'talk the talk', but we doubt that they are truly competent to perform the tests as per the regulations, and you could be deemed at fault for not using a competent person to perform you PAT testing.

Doing PAT testing properly is not something that can be readily undertaken by an untrained novice, even if they have the latest and greatest 'fully automatic' PAT testing equipment.

 

Portable Appliance Testing (PAT Testing) Training and Qualifications

The qualification for PAT Testing is the City and Guilds 2377 award. This is available in two seperate units designed for two seperate job roles:

City & Guilds unit	Title
2377 - 100	Management of Electrical equipment Maintenance Certificate
2377 - 200	Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment Certificate

The City and Guilds 2377-200 award is the qualification for engineers carrying out PAT testing. Some may also choose to do the City and Guilds 2377-100 unit, but the -200 unit is the most popular.

The management unit is appropriate to a manager who does not perform PAT testing, but who is responsible for maintenance of a building or site, and who may buy-in a PAT testing service, or alternatively a manager within a business that offers a PAT testing service and advice to other organisations.

City and Guilds 2377 PAT Testing Assessment and Qualification

The City and Guilds 2377 award is a level 3 qualification on the National Qualification Framework (NQF). It is a mixture of practical demonstration to an assessor and a stringent 'on-line' exam requiring 80% to pass, and hence the success rate of candidates nationally is not as high as for many other City and Guilds exams.

At Lucid our success rate for first sitters of the on-line exam is running at around 75%, but we offer candidates a free re-sit and the opportunity to revise for a few days, or weeks, before coming back for a resit.

Because the qualification is known to be tough, it has some real prestige within the industry, and it is clearly the qualification that commercial PAT Testing engineers should have.

Special Offer: Megger Sponsors Lucid PAT Testing Course

At Lucid we have struck a special deal with Megger, a well-known manufacturer of high-quality electrical test equipment, to offer our 2-day City and Guilds 2377-200 PAT Testing course for a special all-in price of £975+ VAT including a state-of-the-art Megger PAT4 DV3 (rrp £929+VAT)!

This is a great deal for anybody starting-up or expanding their PAT testing, and provides them with a fully automatic PAT tester, and the ability to train-on and set-up their instrument during the training course.

This course is also eligible for ELCAS funding for ex-forces personnel as it provides a level 3 qualification.

Obviously we can offer a discounted price if you already have your own PAT tester, but this is a startling deal, including City & Guilds enrolment, examination and certification costs plus the tester. We even provide lunch and refreshments during the course.

Benefits of Using Qualified PAT Testers

Our experience, and stories we have heard within the industry, have convinced us that it is not only potentially dangerous and hence irresponsible to use PAT testers whose competence is untested, but it can also be a false economy.

There are advertisements for PAT testing at very low rates of around £1 per asset. Some of these are surrounded by small print that demands thousands of assets or other such stipulations, but without such small print testing can not, in our opinion, be reliably and properly carried out at such low rates. In order to achieve such rates corners may be cut and this can at best lead to good equipment being 'failed' and made worthless since compensating calculations or measurements are not taken, or worse still safety is compromised.

The failing of good equipment by incompetent PAT testers can easily cost a business hundreds of pounds and can quickly result in a saving of a few pence or tens of pence per asset in the testing charge being negligible. We have heard tales of PAT testing being done twice due to expensive assets being 'failed', and this clearly makes a lowest cost approach to PAT testing a reckless one. To be sure your PAT testers know what they are doing we suggest you check they have the City & Guilds 2377-200 qualification.

 

PAT Testing 'Assets'

In PAT Testing terminology an 'asset' is anything that requires testing. The difficulty is that some assets are quite ordinary and can be tested very routinely, such as power cords, whilst other assets are more complex to test and consequently take longer. Most businesses have more 'assets' than they realise with a typical desktop PC often being four or more assets. This is because a desktop PC consists of a monitor, a main processor unit and power cords for each of them. When other items such as printers, scanners and mains extension blocks are added to this list, it is not unusual to find that a tyoical office business has around five to seven assets per office worker. A result is that even quite small businesses can have hundreds of assets, and a one person office is likely to have ten to twenty assets that require testing.

 

Other Electrical Cabling Qualifications & Tests

If you are interested in any other electrical cabling qualifications then we would be very interested to hear from you. Electical cabling is not our core business, but it fits neatly between our communications cabling and our Health & Safety training services. There are aspects of both of these where a knowledge of electrical safety, earthing and bonding, and recommendations for best practice is a distinct advantage. We have therefore decided to offer these qualifications and awards with the emphasis being on providing a low-cost route for candidates, adding value where we can.