When you are an employer, the laws in Britain in the 21st century are far stricter than they were even 30 years ago. A lot of them centre around the matter of keeping employees safe at work and have to do with any electrical equipment that they are required to use, and fire safety. For instance, as regards fire safety, every employer must carry out a fire risk assessment of his premises. That is the case even if you only employ one person, but if you employ more than four you must also keep a written record of it. In addition, you are required to undertake a review of your assessment on a regular basis – although the law doesn’t define what is meant by "regular".

Employers are required to ensure that all of the electrical equipment that employees use is safe and in good condition. This one comes under the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 which simply tells you that you must ensure that the electrical equipment – basically anything that has a plug attached to it – is safe.

There are plenty of companies who can carry out what is known as PAT testing – Portable Appliance Testing – of all your electrical equipment – computers, copiers, the office kettle, and so on – in order to ensure that you are compliant with the law. Those same companies will often also be able to check the wiring in your building. They will then issue you with the appropriate certificates in order that you are able to show that you are compliant with the law. Equally, in the case of PAT testing, they will identify any items which are deemed to be unsafe and which either need to be repaired or disposed of.

The net result is that more businesses are calling for PAT testing, which is putting some strain on Facilities Management Companies and Electrical Contractors who are quoting for their primary services are now also being asked to undertake PAT testing as a bolt on as well.

Unfortunately, many smaller contractors do not have the time or sufficient employees themselves, or for that matter the necessary equipment, to carry out PAT testing and so they are approaching some of the bigger companies that carry out PAT testing on a national basis to help them out. There certainly are companies that have engineers nationwide who are properly qualified to carry out PAT testing and have the appropriate equipment. Some of these will also carry out PAT testing out of business hours so that it doesn’t interfere with the day to day operations of their customers.

The problem here is that, although you would think that companies that specialise in PAT testing would be delighted with the extra work, the margins that are involved mean that it is often not worth their while. The contractor may have quoted a price to the end customer only to find that it is not sufficient for both the contractor to make a bit of extra profit for basically not doing anything and for the PAT testing company to make a reasonable profit as well. In fact, some of the big national PAT testing companies are becoming very frustrated at the fact that they are offered this extra work but simply cannot afford to carry it out.

The answer is actually fairly simple. If Facilities Management Companies and Electrical Contractors contact us at this point we would be more than happy to assist with the PAT testing element and essentially work in partnership to ensure that the end client gets a good service at a fair price to meet their specification.

The end customer gets the service that he needs at a fair price that he is willing to pay from a company that specialises in PAT testing, and everyone is happy.