Electrician - know thy place

The established order of things

Clients are people with money who know what they want. The rest of us (Architects, Consultants, Engineers, Contractors) tend to think of them as people with money who don't know what they want. So we, the professionals, sell, persuade, cajole and even bully them into having something they don't really need.  Hopefully (for our industry) the good Client won't have enough confidence and grasp of the technologies to fight the professionals off. Our futures are assured.

Architects are the breathe of life to our professions. Without them most of us would be unemployed. Imagine a building with floors that could take the weight of anything likely to be placed upon them. Half our structural engineers would be gone in a flash. Suppose our new buildings each had large ground floor plant rooms, with no supporting columns randomly splashed about, with large high doors and level access. How many of us in the 'heavy plant moving business' would survive ?  What if large service ducts at man-height were built along every corridor and through every doorway, hidden only by neat but easily removable panels ?  Then where would the gangs of electricians, pipe fitters, ceiling tilers etc be ?  They would of course be joining the structural engineers. Our futures are assured.

Consultants we all know so well.  Speaking from my insignificant position in the electrical equipment supply trade, they are the people who ring up and ask why your "Mark III Thinga-me-bob" is 110% efficient.  Like all good suppliers we ring back to tell them about real and apparent power. We tell them about power factors, and how they should not divide output kVA by input kVA to obtain efficiencies. Happily for my profession they do not usually remember the answers. 

Consultants are the people who prepare electrical schematics drawings, take the trouble to work out all the cable sizes, and then expect the contracting electrician to take responsibility for the cables. It is the untrained latter who must be able to do the calculations and live by the consequences. The untrained latter must also be the mathematical genius who can master discrimination curves on behalf of the consultant. What a queue of unemployed consultants there would be if each had been asked at his first job interview to answer three simple questions - given a fused switch, a piece of WIRE, a motor, and a few parameters, work out the efficiency, specify the fuse, and size the cable.  Sorry, am I going too fast ?  - our futures are assured.

"Managing Contractors" and "Main Contractors" are the bread and butter of our living.  They employ thousands of us to watch each other. We masquerade under dozens of job titles like QA Auditor, Factory Inspector, Electrical Supervisor, Managing Contractor's Commissioning Engineer, Site Manager, Quantity Surveyor - you name it, we have it.

When we factory test our "Mark III Thinga-me-bob" the main electrical sub-contractor likes to pop over for the day to see the tests. He likes a good meal. So does the main civil contractor's representative, and the Managing Contractor's representative, and the Client's Consulting Engineer. Oh yes, we must not forget the Client. Fortunately for all our futures, no-one will have thought to invite the humper who must install it in the client's premises, the electrician who must cable it, the electrical engineer who must commission it, or the maintenance engineer who must keep it working.  When we come to hump, cable, commission and maintain, we can be sure that none of the personnel involved will have ever seen our "Mark III Thinga-me-bob".  Our futures are assured.

We learn at school, we learn at college, and we learn "on the job".  Those things we did not learn, either because they were too difficult for us to grasp or they bored us, we entrust to our subordinates and Training Officers.  A good example is the IEE Regulations (the electrical regs !).  Consultants actually specify it !  Why, when it is almost the law of the land ?  They don't apply it, they just specify it. The Contracts Manager in the supply company is quick to spot the "IEE Regs" reference in any spec.. He will of course send his juniors on the next IEE Regs course. We all know that fault currents and earthing will be a problem for them, so they in turn will make sure the electrical installation sub-contracts include "IEE Regs" references. Your typical electrical contractor panics at this - low and behold the electricians find themselves on an IEE Regs course, even if it is way above their heads.  Strictly only the designer need bother him or herself with the IEE Regs - everyone else just does as they are told   ..... wasn't the designer the Consultant ?   If ever Consultants were to learn about the IEE Regulations many thousands of training officers would be out of work - our futures are assured.

So, why do most of us still make a profit ?  Why are most of us successful in keeping our jobs ?  It is because we are supported by four or five small groups of trades who, between them, have an infinite amount of stored knowledge, and an infinite amount of wisdom. Our Humpers can assess the strength of a floor "by eye". They have mastered the art of tipping valuable electronics upside down and feeding them through windows and ventilation shafts. Our Electricians have "a feel" for the right size cable. They have one very long arm (for cabling in air shafts) and one very short arm (for cabling under floorboards). Our Commissioning Engineers can cast their "untrained" eyes over the circuit diagrams and intelligently guess what the designer and the consultant intended.  A good Maintenance Engineer will make anything work, if he wants it badly enough, in spite of the appalling design, appalling location and environment, and appalling use to which it is being put.

Our futures are assured.