Domestic work as approved contractor

[cornburn]

I've been looking over the sites but can't find a specific answer. I'll be looking to register with NIC in March but am confused about their 2 schemes. I always thought the domestic installer was like the first level, and approved contractor was the next level up. After reading more it seems as if they are 2 completely different things.

Most of our work is commercial, so I was planning on joining as a domestic installer then upgrading (but not sure of the cost of this)

Now I've read more it's not clear whether as an approved contractor you can do domestic work under them and have access to the online reporting to local council, domestic forms etc.

Do you have to join both schemes separately and pay 2 lots of fees or can you join one, which covers you for the other?

As I said, most of our work is commercial and at the moment is self certificated. I want to start putting this through a scheme but aren't sure if the assessment will be much harder for commercial work or whether they'll want any additional qualifications. I don't yet have 2391 so if you can upgrade membership for little cost the best route might be

domestic installer > get 2391 > upgrade to approved contractor

If anyone can help I'd appreciate it, I know many of you are on one scheme or the other so you domestic installers must know what they've asked for to become an "approved contractor" and how the 2 schemes are linked (if at all)

Thanks

 

[MvP Electrics]

hi,

I was told by niceic that u can apply for approved contractor as long as you have 4 major jobs(consumer unit install or rewire) to be assessed on. they told me this in october, i know a few guys that dont have 2391 and they have approved membership.

 

[cornburn]

Thanks for that. I guess the way to do it might be to do the 4 major jobs (mixture of domestic and commercial - 2 of each), make sure the domestic ones are done within 30 days of the assessment and the commercial ones are certificated on standard forms. I wonder how many jobs they want to look at if you're already a domestic installer, whether they still want 4 or whether they take into account they've already seen some of your work and just ask for 2. I suppose it depends where they are too. Someone in the family has an old barn with all old 3 phase stuff, I wonder how many major jobs I could make out of doing that? Would they think I was taking the **** if I designed it in such a way that there were 4 major jobs there? Hmmm

 

[andekoch]

the 4 jobs need to be at 4 different addresses. and to upgrade from domestic to approved they will still want to see 4 jobs.
what i gathered was: if you only do domestic then register as domestic. If you do any commercial then register as approved since approved can do domestic but not the other way around (ie in the eyes of the nic approved is a higher grade of membership than domestic, although they never admit that but when you have been with them for a while that is the impresssion you will get).

 

[MvP Electrics]

if your goin with niceic, approved is best. its more respected and known of. on the london underground I was told to stop testing and inspecting the dbs down there cos i wasnt on niceic approved scheme

 

[kung]

With NICEIC approved you can still apply for the domestic installer scheme and are exempt from assessment at application stage not sure if it costs you money though or if so how much ! best give them a call.

 

[lewlec]

hi
after i 1st joined as an approved contractor i had done a domestic job and then tried to register it on line for part p and found that i couldnt, so then i rang up and applied for the domestic installer status at no extra cost and if i remember correctly they sent me all the details i needed... so i now have a approved contractor certificate and a domestic installer certificate.
hope this helps
regards gary

 

[cornburn]

cool, thanks for all the helpful comments everyone. It's getting much clearer. I'd still be interested to hear from anyone who was a DI and upgraded to an AC. I'm going to call them next week but it would be interesting to know if the process is much easier if you're already on their domestic scheme. I'm not sure I do enough "major jobs" on commercial premises to give them 4 within 30 mins of each other, unless a new circuit is classed as a major job. I definitely don't do 4 CU changes on commercial properties each month!