See,
This is why I'm glad we ditched the permit system over here in 1993, in favour of self-certification.
How this works is this, for most smaller jobs, you use a "Certificate Of Compliance", to buy these things, you must have a practicing licence as a qualified electrician and sign for either a single one or you can buy a "book" of 20 of them, from your supply house.
On the actual certificate, you state what work you have done, any pre-existing conditions, there is room for a simple drawing.
You must also sign the certificate, give your real name in block capitals and add your practicing licence #.
There is also a part of the page that requires you to write down things like test results, leaving that part blank, will open you up to all sorts of legal liability, if you can't be bothered testing your own work, before energising it.
The best thing about these certificates is, they are in triplicate, you give the top copy to the home-owner/building owner, the second copy to your own records and the third is sent off to the Electrical Workers Registration Board, if they ask you to send a certain sequence of COC's for auditing purposes, you need to keep that copy for a period of 5 years, after it was signed.
Usually,
In most cases, you're talking about an electrician, signing these certificates off.
It's really only where you go making wholesale changes to an installation (say moving the mains coming into the building or upgrading a service, pretty much where the MEN point is altered), that an electrical inspector here would be required to co-sign the COC.
Sure there are probably people out there "working under the radar", but at the end of the day, those that want to stay in business for any length of time, are going to be asked the question by a customer, where is my COC?
There has been a HUGE media campaign over here and I've been asked to show my practicing licence, even just to get in the door.
Sorry to take this thread off topic.
