ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area US Inspectors

What qualifies a person in the US as an
Electrical Inspector?
Is there a standard exam and qualifying experience required to make this grade?.
What sort of Trade experience is required to fit this Bill?.
Input from Inspectors please.

trumpy, there is no minimun standard for electrical inspectors , the qualifications. vary from state to state. some of the states have state- licensed electrical inspectors,some do not. most electrical inspector are employed by a city or county goverment. in my city the electical inspector has to hold a master electrician license,with a minimum of five years experience.

Trumpy,
i am not an inspector, however there is a wide gap here as to th qualifications of those whom wear the hat.

i feel badly for the good ones, because the experiences of the bad ones tend to get around and drag them ,as a whole, down a notch.

perhaps here, a strong orginizations advocacy towards a benchmark would help.

hi trumpy, hope you dont mind me answering since i'm not an inspector but my boyfriend is an inspector here in oregon and he had to have 8 years, 4 as a journeyman and also a general supervising electrician license, probably same as a master electricain other places. he also got certified by ICBO with their test and IAEI the inspectors association. he works with a guy that came from another state and got his inspecton job here because he was an inspector in the other state. hes neverbeen an electrician and my boyfriend is always dealing up his screwups. i guess 80.27 suggests that its ok to hire someone like this because he inspected somewhere else. its a bad idea i think. i am always asking my boyfriend for help. it would be a bad deal if we had to depend on someone that didnt know the answers to inspect our work

Trumpy, here in NC our inspectors are like Cindy's. They have to have field experience similar to what Cindy describes and pass a state exam to be qualified.

After this they can work for any municipality.

The problem we have is, the NC state chief inspector doesn't have these qualifications. Or at least if you heard some of his interpretations, you would bet your life that he doesn't.

Roger

The requirements over here are at least, 3years Qualifying Experience as an Electrician and a lot of knowledge of How all things in the Distribution and Control of Power Systems, work.
Also there are requirements of Ethics, pertaining to Inspectors.
And lots of other things, too numerous to mention.


[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 12-04-2002).]