Gauteng Electrical Inspection Authority
IN adverse economic times, it becomes much easier to look for reasons why we should allow non-compliant conditions to exist on electrical installations, rather than to repair them. This is becoming more prevalent with users being forced to sell their homes and the lot of the established electrical contractor with fixed overheads is not improving.
Notwithstanding that the user was responsible for the ‘maintenance' of the electrical installation during the years in which he used it, the price that has to be paid for not maintaining the installation and for appointing poorly qualified ‘electricians' to add to the installation, comes when the installation is sold.
So, how does the legitimate contractor balance this act? Does he quote to do the ‘right thing' or does he lose the job to ‘a paid up member of the rats and mice gang'? Even while trying to achieve compliance with the bare minimum, opportunists within our industry will still find avenues to shoot down the minimum standard for the opportunity to create work at the expense of the previous occupant or contractor who issued the Certificate of Compliance.
This situation has had an even greater impact on new electrical installation work being tendered for, where the only way to achieve the bottom line quote is to either cut corners in the construction phase or to purchase illegal material at the local café at discounted rates. Either way, the honest and established contractor cannot compete.
As an AIA, we are called upon daily to investigate these issues and, although I sympathise with the contractor on existing installations, there should surely be no mercy for an electrical contractor who was awarded a tender only to apply corner-cutting measures in order to complete it.
It is these very contracts where I witness the most blatant deviations of the SANS 10142-1 Wiring Code. It is also here where some elements within our industry conspire to stretch the Standard to its ultimate and where the AIA is most needed.
Yet, the AIA is still regarded by most as an ‘irritation'.
This begs the question: Can this industry survive the current economic hardships without the AIA to referee and level the playing fields? The contracting industry cannot do this alone and the sooner that this fact is accepted and the AIA is used by the entire industry to support it against gross acts of negligence by both registered and unregistered contractors, the better it will be for all.
info@geia.co.za
