Skills

[cliffed]

Can anyone be an electrician theses days,it seems all the old skills have gone & all we get is fast fix this & that.What happened to the conduit,trunking & pyro jobs,everywhere it just gets rougher & rougher,glad I've only got 7 years to go,god help us what's coming up behind us,hav a gud day.

 

[Thefailsafe2012]

It seems most of the commercial jobs I work on nowadays involve throwing in T&E in basket or plastic trunking and conduit, which can seem a little disheartening when you're taking out a 'proper job' (eg steel trunking and conduit), but is there really any need for steel containment above a ceiling?
I would agree it's the way things are going in every walk of life - savings are made in the name of 'efficiency' which often involve employing an army of lesser trained 'fitters' to do the 'donkey work', with a reduced number of skilled tradesmen to oversee or do the difficult bits.
Not just electricians, Kwik Fit style fitters instead of mechanics, PCSOs instead of policemen, teaching assistants instead of teachers, call centre operatives on the 111 line instead of nurses on NHS direct... The list goes on.

A suspended ceiling is basically a big cable tray init? :smilewinkgrin:

 

[7029 dave]

Well you have to move with the times, when I started 34years ago, I was always fascinated with all the slip tube(circa 1920's) running through domestic properties, under floor boards in loft space, must of taken those old sparks ages,and there was us putting in t&e etc ,so same thing now days its called progression lol

 

[Lucien Nunes]

There's a big difference between de-skilling a job because no-one cares about quality, and because the materials and tools make it easier to do it just as well. In 1910, you could reasonably have spent an hour or two making a tee-joint in a domestic lighting circuit. You would have needed to joinery skills, to make a nice mitred tee in the casing and capping. Soldering skills, making sound joints without the luxury of an electric iron or cored solder, including knowing the approved way to interlace the strands of the two cables. You needed to know how to prepare, apply and bond the rubber tapes and then, if specified, vulcanise the finished joint in a bath of molten sulphur.

This is all fascinating for me as a historian and some of these skills I am trying to learn, but there is no doubt that you can make an equally sound joint in 2 mins with a plastic box and three Wagos, for a tiny fraction of the cost to the customer in equivalent money. The fact that less skill is needed is inevitable, when manufacturers are competing to make products that are quick, easy and reliable to fit. The best scenario is when a spark who knows how to vulcanise a joint and mark out a casing crossover uses Wagos, because you get a careful man and an efficient method. But of course, you can't justify that to the bean counters.

 

[guest119]

A suspended ceiling is basically a big cable tray init? :smilewinkgrin:

There's 2 Ns in innit, get wivit Duderrr:

Boydy

 

[Gavin A]

There's 2 Ns in innit, get wivit bruvrrr:

corrected for you.

 

[Engineer54]

The main problem with the lack of skills in designing and erecting metal containment systems and the like, is that the colleges these days are basing the majority of the courses on domestic type installations rather than across the board (eg domestic, Commercial, Industrial, as i and most of the older generation electricians were taught.

At the time when i had completed my apprenticeship, you could quite easily have gone into any sector of the industry and held your own!! From what i can see of today's electricians coming out of there time, that's no longer the case, especially if the companies they worked for weren't trading in all sectors of the industry, which is it seems is generally the case now...

That and allowing all these parasitic elements/organisations into the industry hasn't done you lot in the UK any favours whatsoever. You only have to look at the rest of the Western European countries, to see how far they have all left you behind when it comes to providing good in depth meaningful apprenticeships and training. In many cases, being government provided and or supported, where dare i say it, you'll not see any electrical trainee courses being offered or accepted!!