PAT Testing - Charges!

[Risteard]

And I bet the cowboys are not Part P.

What does that have to do with the price of milk?

 

[3wayselectrical]

Let me get this straight, 200 appliances @£1.80 each, that's £360 for a days work and not very physically demanding work at that! I can't get £150/day on a domestic rewire and working on your own is hard graft. Where do I sign up for a PAT course, will I still need NICEIC registration ( I still don't quite know what I'm getting for my money on that ) and what's the going rate for a 230v and 115v tester?

 

[Harry Worth]

Two day course at your local college will get you a C&G in PAT testing (it's an 80% pass mark). You don't need NICEIC registration. You'll need a decent PAT tester to do the numbers so a Seaward Megatest 350 with all the trimmings at £2,100.00 (probably plus VAT). The down side - you've got to find 1,000 items a week that need testing and someone that's happy to pay £1.80 a pop! I've just been offered 25p an item and there's 2000 items waiting for me that I have to clear in a week!!!!

 

[Guest123]

2000 items over 1 week (5 days) = 400 per day.

400 per day assuming 8am-5pm less 30 mins each way travel, less 30 mins dinner = 8 hours at best. 400/8 = 50 per hour, 60/50 = an appliance every 1.2 mins or every 72 seconds.

All for £500 too.


Absolutely ridiculous, that's nowt more than a re-sticker job on offer.

 

[UNG]

So just to pay for the PAT tester you need to test 8400 appliances

Something just dosen't add up at 25p per appliance not least making a living

 

[3wayselectrical]

Two day course at your local college will get you a C&G in PAT testing (it's an 80% pass mark). You don't need NICEIC registration. You'll need a decent PAT tester to do the numbers so a Seaward Megatest 350 with all the trimmings at £2,100.00 (probably plus VAT). The down side - you've got to find 1,000 items a week that need testing and someone that's happy to pay £1.80 a pop! I've just been offered 25p an item and there's 2000 items waiting for me that I have to clear in a week!!!!

Many thanks for the info. I'm not too sure of going in with the biggest and the best tester to start, but at least I've got a bench mark to compare against. I think I'll take a look at the market in my location and see what the rates are. I aint no spring chicken any more and whilst I appreciate Pat testing is prety mind numbing stuff I'm sick of getting undercut on installation work to the point where I can no longer make a living. In addition the oppertunity to tell NICEIC where they can stick there over priced rip off anual membership is almost too much to resist!

 

[Harry Worth]

So just to pay for the PAT tester you need to test 8400 appliances

Something just dosen't add up at 25p per appliance not least making a living

And I didn't get the job - They were going to supply a vehicle, fuel and the PAT testing kit. No pay between sites so if you get stuck in traffic you're stuffed!

 

[UNG]

And I didn't get the job - They were going to supply a vehicle, fuel and the PAT testing kit. No pay between sites so if you get stuck in traffic you're stuffed!

Is that because you are too cheap or too expensive. At 25p/appliance you cannot be testing everything properly

The purpose of PAT testing is to prove adequate maintenance that is documented at such low rates you wouldn't have time to locate and write down the serial number and conduct and document all the tests at 25p this would not be a viable rate

Fortunately to my knowledge no duty holder has been taken to court for serious injury or death that resulted from misleading PAT testing. Lack of knowledge is not a defence and the less knowledgeable duty holders who procure PAT testing believe that all these companies are fullfilling the duty of care they need to provide.

A friend of mine recently had some PAT testing done at his hotel & bar that I can only describe as shambolic, the guy turned up at short notice two weeks before the arranged appointment date so no one was available to escort him round the building,
a large number of appliances / leads were not tested thoughout the building although adjacent appliances had been tested, one appliance was faulty yet still got a "Passed" sticker. Now I'm just waiting to see the test results / report and the revisit they are doing to complete the work

 

[Harry Worth]

Didn't get the job probably because (well quite frankly the look on may face probably told the interviewer everything he needed to know) I questioned whether you could even find the items in the demanded time allocated let alone do any sensible inspection/testing. For the throughput the company required I calculated you'd need to average an item every 1 minute and 12 seconds if it were a 40 hour week. Of course you've travel to site and back, time take to find the responsible person (ie stood in reception for fifteen minutes), time taken to find equipment, time taken waiting for people to turn computers off etc. Quite frankly I think you'd be better off stacking tins of beans in ASDA.

 

[nickblake]

400 items a day no chance , if you have them all lined up on a desk you'll never be able to do that the machines wil not be able to turn them round at that speed on average with having to un plug route around to follow the cables to find the plug then you can average 100 a day even 200 items are pushing it ive been doing pat testing for years as part of my job top amount i have done in a day is 140

 

[Harry Worth]

400 items a day no chance , if you have them all lined up on a desk you'll never be able to do that the machines wil not be able to turn them round at that speed on average with having to un plug route around to follow the cables to find the plug then you can average 100 a day even 200 items are pushing it ive been doing pat testing for years as part of my job top amount i have done in a day is 140

Thanks for the info - they did a day rate and I quote "If you don't feel confident you'll get through the numbers we do a day rate of £50 and expect you to do 300 items" How do you type a rasberry!

 

[ickleant]

Has any one tried This margin calculator:

PAT Testing Margin Calculator / Tester Blog

it looks like a good idea for those big jobs. I'm going to give it a try quoting a few jobs and printing the sheet off so I can give them the same price if they ring back up. Think i'm wasting my time?

 

[oldtimer]

It depends what you market is ie sites with 100s of items then you price to suit or say a landlord with 12 items and a microwave to test when you give them a fixed cost. I did not want to do PAT but I kept getting the can you put a couple of lights up and do some PAT testing sorry was the reply economically its not worth it to me A well dont bother then so I got tooled up in PAT so not to miss out on these types of jobs and yet these calls have dropped off and I barely use it but I need to have it ? confused well yes but thats how it is going plus we will never get the sticker brigade sorted out as the Schemies just want to subs and dont care about one individual doing 300-500 items a day

 

[derekrichardson]

I would love to know how people could do 250 test a day. I reckon you could do 100 testa in a normal working day tops, and think £3 an item is fair. I charge £40 for upto 10 items initial cost then £3 an item after that.

:tt1:

 

[Martyc]

I would love to know how people could do 250 test a day. I reckon you could do 100 testa in a normal working day tops, and think £3 an item is fair. I charge £40 for upto 10 items initial cost then £3 an item after that.

:tt1:

I've done PAT testing for about a year as part of my job, I've found if items are virtually laid out for me it takes 5 mins minimum per item to inspect, test and record. So if I work on a basis of a maximum of 8 items per hour, I'd want a minimum of £2.50 per item, plus a minimum charge of 20 items per job just to make a decent living. The more I think about it the more I wonder how these companies survive charging peanuts, not checking anything and getting away with it.