The price war race to the bottom affects all sorts of people. I have it on good authority, several people in various trades, that my pricing is about right for the area and I have no plans on being the cheapest because it just doesn't make business sense for anyone. I've actually increased my prices since starting because I wasn't making enough money to cover the slack periods and there has been no noticeable affect on the volume of business I'm doing.
And now I'm probably going to ruffle a few feathers, but so be it. The issue of short courses.
I did a short course and I have mixed feelings about it. Is it the ideal way to enter this trade? Not really. Would I prefer to have gone the apprenticeship route? Absolutely, but my work/life situation simply would not have allowed it, I'm not going to go into to much detail about it, but suffice to say 3 days in an office in Leicestershire, 300 mile a week driving back and forth Wales and variable work commitments that saw me travelling an awful lot (sometimes with only a few hours notice and sometimes for weeks at a time). By the time I made the decision to change career, the working arrangements had already cost me thousands on an OU maths degree that I failed because I couldn't get enough study time together due to work.
The short course is not where I want to leave my learning, but now I'm in a position to say "actually, I'm going to take myself off to college one day a week and get 2365 level 2" because I'm the boss and because I can, I'm currently looking into courses in the local area with a view to starting in September
However the electrical courses I took were not my first real encounter with electrical work. I did my first electrical job (small as it maybe) when I was about 7 years old (to put it into perspective and to save anyone from asking, that's over 30 years ago), putting plugs on for my Grandma (when we still had red, black and green insulation). Somewhere around the same time I got my own soldering iron so I wouldn't need to 'borrow' my Dads (he still to this day reminds me I need to return any tools I borrow promptly) or my Uncles (he was a international service engineer, so his iron had 3 banana plugs instead of a 13A plug which is where I got my first shock, unplugging it without turning it off). Since then I've been involved in all sorts of work for family, friends (partial rewires, new consumer units, new circuits - and no I didn't do anything that was notifiable once Part P came into force) and as part of various jobs in IT and research and development and just because I could and my employers knew it so they saved money by tasking me to do things. This side of it has include installing power supplies for IT gear, networking, diagnosing and fixing building system faults, CCTV, burglar alarms and designing and building cash handling and ticketing machines from component level (microcontroller based custom electronics, wiring looms etc.) right up to post supply field servicing and upgrades of said machines.
I know my limits and wouldn't dream of stepping outside them without help or the supervision of a more experienced spark, so I do get a little irritated (sometimes very) when all short coursers are tarred with the same brush, we are not all equal. But at the same time I understand the concerns you guys raise about some people who go that route. And to be brutally honest, there were people on the course with me I wouldn't let near a plug top let alone a consumer unit.
Part of the problem is they don't teach the basics (electrical stuff aside), like how to notch a joist (just where you should notch it), how to use power tools, what a spirit level is or anything like that. I'm pretty certain if you asked some of the guys on my course how to sink a back box into the wall, they'd have just looked at you funny and wondered WTF you were saying. I'm fairly confident in my ability to do mechanical and building type work because I spent a lot of my time with my Dad, he taught me the basics of carpentry, building, plumbing, mechanical engineering and car maintenance so I wouldn't get ripped off by unscrupulous blokes who think they can take women for a ride when it comes to such things and to be frank, the variety of skills and tasks I feel comfortable undertaking has shocked many a male colleague over the years. Most guys I know wouldn't even think about having a go at problems with their cars for example but I have no qualms taking an angle grinder and MIG welder to mine if I have to, normally it just involves a socket set and a torque wrench, but you get the picture.
Am I happy with the work I've done thus far? Yes because it's all checked out great from a testing perspective, where it's been addressing poor installation work it's ended up being safer than it was and the customers have all been happy, and no because I think I could have done some things better. But I have a lot to learn and I'm not afraid to admit it, which is why from time to time I'll ask questions of you guys and I'm very grateful for the advice I receive.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is... give us a chance we aren't all the same. I've seen enough garbage work done by apparently seasoned professionals to know it's not all about your route into the trade, the qualifications you have or the badge of your scheme. It's also about your work ethic and the direction your moral compass is pointing.
And so you can see I'm not a cowgirl who makes a mess of things (except maybe some of the plasterboard in these pics), here's a few pics from the kitchen rewire I did a few weeks back. Builder's happy, customer's happy and second fix is coming soon
P.S. I'm open to constructive criticism from the pics, just be gentle with me. The protective bonding conductor seemingly just hanging out is gone, replaced because it wasn't long enough at either end, the photo was taken before it got cut back and the empty back boxes were old and have all been removed.
