PAT Testing - Mike Perry June 2009

 
There was no particular danger in it after all, and with the right equipment and training non-experts would be able to do a competent job, even the Health and Safety Executive says so.   But the test equipment would be costly, so it could only make financial sense if we pooled with a couple of other parishes.  However, if the entire deanery got involved the equipment could save tens of thousands of pounds over its expected life.  By the turn of the year the deanery had given the go-ahead,  and in January 2008 I was talking to salesmen.
 
Many test machines existed but in the end I could see there was only one which could do what I wanted. 
When I briefed my p.p. I showed him the glossy brochure for my number one choice.  His face lit up. He drew breath at the sight of this brightly coloured chunk of hi-tech nestling snugly in the hand. Its surface bristled with shiny buttons, its LCD screen shone brightly.  In short he was mesmerised.
 
I had done my homework and came well-rehearsed to extol the virtues of this choice. To explain that using volunteers with no electrical expertise required a machine that was fool-proof, that could help our volunteer by doing as much of the thinking as possible and reducing their need for decision making.  To underline that we needed a machine capable of minimising the risks of clerical error, such as transcription mistakes.  And this was it!  It could even remember all the details of thousands of tests then dump them into a laptop without so much as a pencil being sharpened.  But somehow my efforts all seemed so superfluous.  His eyes had already glazed over, he had already been hooked, it had been love at first sight.
 
We finally spent over £2,000 on a test machine, bar code scanner, laptop and software.  Training volunteer parishioners added a further £1,600. By summer 2008 we had found our volunteers and soon afterwards they had been trained up as a team of 7 PAT Testers, ready to start work across the entire deanery.   
 
We were trained by Kevin,  an expert from the company which manufactured our test machine. 

Before training began I briefed him to let me know if, on completion of training, there were any volunteers he felt uneasy about.  He didn’t. Yet although Chris Haas and Con Mc Hugh are electronics professionals the rest of us had no relevant experience.  Kris Pears is in I.T., Pat Flynn had retired from the building industry, Jack Upton from teaching and Jim Rossiter from coach driving; and then there was me, the accountant.
 
They have all proved  Kevin to be right but that doesn’t mean it was easy. In the early days we sheepishly compared notes and found that we were all making a hash of things (except for the electronics whizzos, of course). In particular, getting a safe reading for the Earth circuit seemed implausibly difficult.  At times a sense of obsession took over, especially when the appliance was so obviously new that it couldn’t possibly be faulty. However, none of the volunteers was fazed by the many challenges that needed to be overcome and, to a man, every volunteer threw himself enthusiastically into the task.
 
Their perseverance has now paid off. In the 8 months since starting they have signed off 10 parishes, a university chaplaincy a residential retreat centre and a bungalow. They have tested 1,100 items of equipment ranging from portable telephones on one hand to commercial cooking ranges, sound systems and catering coolers on the other. Our computer holds detailed records showing the technical readings for every electrical test and visual check we have performed. On completion of a test session the machine automatically transfers the data to our laptop and we provide the parish priest with a printed record of results in full compliance with legislation. Yet the only writing required of our volunteers is to note their initials and date on the test label fixed to each appliance. And next time round the test machine will remember each item of equipment at a parish – the room location, description and unique identity number given to it -  meaning that there will be much less information for us to key in.

So far we have formally failed a total of 24 appliances, due to either insufficient earthing (15 items)  dangerous casing (6),  poor insulation (2) or wrong polarity (1).  All failed equipment is quarantined on the spot and most is scrapped shortly afterwards since repair is usually not economical.  But those figures exclude scores more appliances which passed only because they could be fixed on the spot.  In particular many plugs were found with loose or missing terminal screws, often evidenced by signs of overheating on the plug or cable if you looked carefully. In other cases there were loose or unconnected earths, or the transposition of live and neutral.  In one case, illustrated here, on investigating why the earth circuit failed our test we found that the screw in the earth terminal of the plug had been in contact with plastic insulation instead of the copper earth wire – you can see the impression of the screw-tip in the yellow & green plastic sheath. For good measure it also had a blown fuse which was bypassed by aluminium foil. It was in an extension lead used in a large meeting room.

There are still 5 parishes,  5 convents, 2 social clubs and a community centre to go before we complete the first round of testing.  Although I doubt we would have paid as much as £3.64 if we had used a contractor to do the work, it is easy to see that come September 2009, 12 months after we started, the savings from work already done will have paid for the costs of the project.  The only further spending needed is to replenish our sticky labels and to have the machine re-calibrated every year.  So, god willing, we can look forward to virtually free  testing for a decade or more – so long as our volunteers don’t decide to charge.

During this first round of testing we have been over cautious in the depth of work done.  In future we can tailor the work to the nature of the appliance being tested, which is what the professionals do. Surprisingly, industry wisdom is that most problems are found at the visual inspection of equipment rather than the electrical test, that is certainly our experience. The workload has been heavier than anticipated so tailoring the work in that way, by eliminating superfluous electrical tests,  will be very welcome.   We also hope to engage a helper from each parish to assist the tester at future visits rather than rely on one of the other volunteers to help out.

In the words of Fr David Kenir of The Ark of the Covenant Retreat Centre “we were very pleased and impressed with the professional way the test was carried out ...and the financial savings to individual parishes are substantial”.  The project has undoubtedly made the deanery a safer place for the clergy and parishioners alike and has demonstrated how much can be accomplished when generous people apply their time and enthusiasm. It also taught me one other valuable lesson – beware the brown envelope.