Friday 29 May 2009

Free C&G 2377 Sample Questions and Answers

For free copies of Sample Questions sent to you just become a follower and let me have your e-mail address and I will forward these to you or e-mail dirkcorrs@live.co.uk say you want questions and answers an I will arrange this for you as soon as possible.

Thursday 21 May 2009

Sample Exam Questions for City and Guilds 2377

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Sample Exam Questions City and Guilds 2377

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Guides to the Code of Practice and The City and Guilds Certificate Requirements

Following shortly is A Guide to The Code of Practice For In-Service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment by Dirk Corrs. This will help you to focus on the important and relevant issues contained within the code of practice show you what you want or need to know to pass the examine and bgine to become a strong PAT Inspector practically out in the field.

A Guide to The Level 3 Certificates for the Code of Practice For In-Service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment by Dirk Corrs this will help you to identify what is required by the pre-assessment and examination process what you need to have available to do the exam how and when the exam will be undertaken.

Coming Soon! Guides to The Code of Practice for In-service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment and A Guide to the Level 3 Certificates

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Sunday 17 May 2009

The Guide to the Code of Practice

The Guide to the IEE Code of Practice for In-Service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment by author Dirk Corrs will be coming soon.

So keep watching!!

Exam Sample Questions

Below in the previous post are some sample exam questions for the City and Guilds 2377 Code of Practice For In-Service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment commonly known in the trade as Portable Appliance Testing and Inspection or PAT Inspection for short.

To successfully complete these questions you can use you gain or prior knowledge or learning depending upon your own skill level but suffice it to say otherwise you can use the IEE Code of Practice for In-Service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment that will contain somwhere within 70 plus page every exact answer.

Knowing the IEE Code of Practice For In-Service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment will help your answer these questions without reference to the book but the exam is an open book exam so you can take it in with you to the exam.

More will be explained later about open book exams right now it can be said that knowing the book and therefore being able to answer exam questions without relying totally on the book speeds up what you are doing and using the book only for those things you cannot quite remember.

20 SAMPLE QUESTIONS for C&G2377 Exam


1.Equipment Classifications in BS 2754 & BS3535 are identified as:

(a) Class I, II and A
(b) Class A, B and II
(c) Class I, B and C
(d) Class I, II and III


2. Electrical equipment maintenance is a statutory requirement within the:

(a) lEE Wiring Regulations
(0) Electricity at Work Regulations 1989
(c) Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974
(d) Electricity Supply Regulations 1988

3. The two most important safety tests to be performed on Class I equipment may be considered to be:

(a) Earth continuity and load test
(b) Flash test and operation test
(c) Earth continuity and insulation resistance test
(d) Leakage test and operation test

4. A suitably rated fuse to be fitted in the supply cord to a 3kW electric kettle is one manufactured to:

(a) BS88Part2
(b) BS 1361
(c) BS 1362
(d) BS 3036


5. British Standard 6500 is the common Standard for::


(a) Flexible cords
(b) Fixed wiring in houses
(c) Steel wire armoured cables in industry
(d) Wiring in automobiles


6. The responsibility for ensuring electrical equipment is used safely is the duty of:


(a) an employer, employee and self-employed person
(b) an employee only
(c) a self-employed person only
(d) a 'domestic servant'

7. The responsibility for providing suitable electrical equipment for use at work is in:

(a) The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989
(0) Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1992
(c) British Standard 7671:1992
(d) Yellow Pages


8. The responsibility for maintaining electrical equipment in a safe condition is in Electricity at Work Regulation:


(a) 4(1)
(b) 4(2)
(c) 4(3)
(d) 4(4)


9. The Electricity at Work Regulations apply to:

(a) Industrial installations only
(b) Industrial and commercial installations only
(c) Domestic and industrial installations only
(d) All electrical installations in the United Kingdom

10. Class I electrical equipment:

(a) is only that which has exposed metalwork requiring earthing

(b) has a two core connecting lead
(c) has a three core connecting lead
(d) is all insulated

11. Class I electrical equipment requires in-service maintenance that includes:

(a) an earth continuity test
(b) a flash test
(c) a dielectric strength test
(d) a hi-pot test every 12 months

12. The full range of test currents recommended for earth continuity testing is:

(a) (4- 24)V
(b) (20 - 200)mA
(c) (20 - 500)mA
(d) 2OmA to 25A

13. Class I data processing equipment may need an earth continuity test current not exceeding:

(a) l00 mA
(b) 4A
(c) 14A
(d) 25A



14. An earth continuity test on an electric kettle should be performed with a current of:

(a) 25mA
(b) 25A
(c) 25kA
(d) 25MA

15. An earth continuity test is applicable to:

(a) Class I equipment
(b) Class II equipment
(c) Class III equipment
(c) Class 0 equipment


16. The UK standard core insulation colours for phase, neutral and protective conductors of power supply leads for electrical equipment are respectively:

(a) brown, blue and green/yellow
(b) blue, brown and green/yellow
(c) red, black and blue
(d) red, black and green

17. The test voltage to be applied to an item of Class I equipment for insulation resistance testing is recommended to be:

(a) 50Vac.
(b) 250V d.c.
(c) 500Vd.c.
(d) l000V ac.




18 Equipment which achieves protection against electric shock by inclusion of a connection to the protective earthing conductor in the fixed installations is classified as:

a Class I
b Class II
C Class III
d Class 0l.

19 For protection against electric shock, Class I equipment relies upon

a One layer of basic insulation
b basic insulation plus a sheath or covering
C basic insulation and means of connection to the protective earthing
conductor
d at least two layers of insulation.

20 A safety isolating transformer for Class III equipment must conform to
a BS3456
b BS3535
c BS4533
d BS5?58.


NOW Go BACK AND CHECK YOUR WORK


· IMPORTANT-Have you filled in your candidate number in PENCI]

Have you filled in your answers in PENCIL in the ap


~39459/O~7o58 KF 44232. © 1998 city & Guilds.

Tuesday 12 May 2009

Portable Appliance Testing

The Post below will give you some insight into the Managament of a portable appliance testing programme most are managed badly foryou as the postntial portable appliance tester there is money to be earned from that bad management others laziness is your profit keep following this blog and Squidoo Lens for more advice an tips

Is Your Pat Testing Rip off or Value For Money?

Is Your Pat Testing Rip off or Value For Money?

Part I

Are you concerned about the cost of testing all the portable appliance equipment in your company?

Do you often feel that even though you recognise that you have a lot of this type of equipment it seems that the resources devoted to it far outweigh the realistic benefits or dangers?

If the answers to either or both of the above two questions is yes then you need to read on.

You need to be aware that the most important aspect of Portable Appliance Testing is not the actual testing. This is necessary and needs to be done, but it is the Management of this system.

Ok so you may not be an engineer but you are high up in the company and you couldn’t realistically get to such a position and be stupid.

If you are stupid and you have risen in the company then you won’t be interested in this leaflet and any way if you are stupid the last thing you will want to do is to draw attention to yourself by rocking the boat.

If however you have a budget to manage and are interested in getting value for money then you will be interested in what I have to tell you.

The mistake that most people or companies make is to allow the person who actually goes out and does the testing also be the person who manages the system. This is a very big mistake.

This may be fine for small institutions or businesses those places that only have approximately 200 items or less to manage and test. For such places these items could all be brought to one location and reviewed therefore they can easily be audited as still being in existence.

If however you have above 500 items and possibly in excess of several thousand items then this is no longer practical and management, registration, and accurate records become the bedrock of cost effective Portable Appliance Testing.




For you and your company a large amount of your buildings, facilities and maintenance budget each year perhaps between 5% and 15% might be consumed in just this part of your annual maintenance programme and if you look back you might find that over a period of years the average cost seems to be steadily rising.

It is easy to conclude that this is due to the fact that levels of portable equipment within the company are rising but do the maths are the levels of portable equipment rising in the same proportion as the average testing budget or is the testing budget rising faster if this is so then why is it so.

Poor records and poor management and poor auditing (if any real management and auditing takes place at all) of the system that’s the reason why, if this is so how and why is it so and more importantly how do I address this and stop it.

Well in the first period or cycle of testing a record is compiled, no record is 100% accurate believe me for someone who has done a lot of Portable Appliance Testing across a wide ranging variety of establishments it just does not happen, but it is your records that is the reason that you are testing anyway.

It is to provide evidence of maintenance in the event of accident or injury is why you test this is what the legislation requires only your records will do this and no matter how meticulous or forensic any Portable Appliance Tester is there is always that piece of equipment item or lead that somebody has tucked away and every body forgets about.

Perhaps on the day that the Portable Appliance Tester showed up the person who knew where it was; simply wasn’t there.

That is not crucial you have a maintenance system established and publicised within your establishment with adequate records if an item does not have a current label or that label date has expired all your staff should know to withdraw it from use and to report its existence and current state of maintenance to your facilities or maintenance manager i.e. the person who manages the Portable Appliance Testing program, he should update the central records and advise the Portable Appliance Tester.

Who in due course will conduct a test and return it to use or condemn it if it cannot reach suitable safety standards.


Now who do you use to carry out this work, if you directly employ some one to do this work paying them 12K or 14K a year or possibly more then it may seem a bargain or good value maintaining a rolling programme of testing, inspection and maintenance or you may simply go out to contract to have the work done.

You maybe call in a contractor who will charge you by the item or by numbers or groups of items to test record and label your or you may use a mixture of both of these having a continuing rolling programme and topping up when necessary with contractors if or when a backlog develops.

Now do you find that a backlog develops well this is really your issue here has a backlog already developed now or in the past and still more importantly is it the backlog real or is it virtual.

What do you mean real or virtual? They must be real we have 9,500 items registered and recorded and that is growing as we order more equipment such as computer equipment etc, this may take you to 12,000 items, yes but are all these items real or are some virtual, they did exist they were tangible but where some of them taken out of use, scrapped etc.

Not all items go out of use because they have failed a Portable Appliance Test and have been withdrawn on safety grounds some will have and others will simply have become obsolete out of date.

A typical example of this and frequently a major component of any Portable Appliance Testing Register of equipment is Information Technology equipment. In such a case the equipment can comprise such as the following a monitor, a system unit, a printer, possibly speakers (with a mains connection) perhaps even a scanner this system alone can comprise as many as 5 mains connections.

Each needing testing each needing labelling and needing recording separately but they will also be on a capital equipment register which will make the I.T equipment obsolete within a period of 5 years to 10 years max.

When rolling replacement occurs then a new item needs adding to your capital equipment register and your portable appliance testing register and the old equipment needs to be is removed from both of the registers, but what happens to the old item when its scrapped who updates the registers.

Who is responsible for removing it from the register of portable appliance equipment if it is not removed from the register then it becomes a virtual item and perhaps explains why the list of items seems to have a growth rate which can be considered to be geometric if not exponential.

Remember if it is not removed it still carries a financial burden even though it no longer exists for whatever reason it no longer exists.

So you say, but surely the Portable Appliance Tester will report that the item is no longer on the premises, that it no longer exists ah yes but will they.

Does that person you have brought in or that is the contractor or the person you employ directly to test your 12000 items how hard will they look. Is it in their interest to look if across the location they can only find 8,000 items what are they going to do come clean that they can only find 8000 items instead of 12000.

If they are experienced Portable Appliance Testers, they are likely to be aware that this would be the case before hand particularly They will have mostly likely experienced this before.

Except possibly on locations were perhaps all ordering is done through a central stores and all items returned to the central store for correct and effective scrapping. However if local measures are taken for ordering and scrapping then this kind of control is lost.

So the contractor gets paid for 12000 items and he is certain that those 4000 items he cannot locate have been scrapped and so represent no risk or threat of injury. So he knows that he can mark them down as safe he can continue to record them as if they do exist.

The Portable Appliance Testing Company is happy and as for the tester himself it is likely that he been able to have had a much easier time. In reality he may not even have declared to his company that items cannot be found and use the time he has gained to sit around in the canteen and take long meal breaks he knows that he can sign these items off as safe to use at no risk to himself. The only loser here is the client company you.

Well you say we are smarter than that, we have employed directly a person to plan and maintain our system, but do you audit this system and his work and what this individual is actually doing.

We all know that everyone is busy with this meeting and that schedule, so we can take it that the answer is probably no. You are in effect relying on integrity of that person of your portable appliance tester.

That’s admirable but possibly foolish particularly if the person feels in any way annoyed or aggrieved about terms, conditions and pay etc., or if they are simply lazy. If they do have any aggrieved feelings or are idle or want the time to develop some interests on the side at your expense then they also have no interest in revealing the true situation regarding the register of equipment.

They do conversely though have an interest in maintaining a much larger virtual list of equipment containing virtual items that seem to be in need of testing but don’t need testing.

In truth possibly a quarter or more of the items on the register of equipment may no longer exist. The directly employed portable appliance tester will probably have enough knowledge about your business to know which equipment is being scrapped or is due to be scrapped.

Equipment that is beyond economic use (BEU) or beyond economic repair (BER) or simply out dated. So if or when this equipment is scrapped they know that these items can be maintained on the register and passed as serviceable in future with again no real risk or threat of injury or harm.

Remember one computer screen looks very much like any other and one lead may only be identifiable from another lead by its barcode or by its unique number.

If they are shrewd and unscrupulous then they will be on top of this, ahead of the game when equipment is being scrapped or taken out of service they will be peeling off labels with barcodes and noting down the identifying numbers’ as they are aware that the local scrapping of items is happening.

Every item they don’t need to test means that their job is covered, or they can claim to be so overburdened that they need assistance so you now have one full time portable appliance tester and two or three part time portable appliance testers or they say that they need to work overtime to get back on track or that you need to get a contractor in to do some of the work.

Your bill your budget for portable appliance testing suddenly is beginning to expand possibly heading out of control. You meanwhile are actually paying for work that doesn’t need to be done. Do you think your portable appliance tester will enlighten you about this?

Your tester may well have a draw full of barcode labels etc in his workshop from scrapped items of equipment that he has removed from the items of equipment as they have been scrapped but has never removed from the equipment register that he simply uses as or when he needs to cover his job.

You see this type of work is not like a wall say that needs painting and it is easy to see if it has or it has not been painted.

What is the answer well this is an accurate and good register of portable equipment, good management of the portable equipment register and the program of portable appliance testing and regular tiered internal and random auditing of the equipment register and the portable appliance testing is the answer.

Random and tiered auditing means it has to be completely unanticipated and unpredictable and it must be tiered so that it executed by different levels of management right the way up to the assistant CEO and also including the CEO.

I know that this is difficult but it is only by such a rigorous level of auditing in such a random manner can you truly establish that no virtual equipment is being kept on the register by those who may have a vested interest in allowing it to remain so. That is your contractor or your directly employed Portable Appliance Tester.

How frequent and how rigorous you make the higher level audits will determine how true and accurate you want the register to be. Remember for every non-existent item on that register a cost is incurred this can be repeated year in and year out and expand the costs enormously.

The closer an auditor is in his working relationship to the contractor or the directly employed tester the more there is inherent dangers and the more suspicion there can be placed upon the truly random aspect and therefore the accuracy of an audit.

Those colleagues who have to work closely together over the duration of a working relationship and so may be dependent in many ways for cooperation may also be unwilling to impugn a colleague for inaccurate record keeping however if at each level of audit the person believes they may be found out or discovered the accuracy will increase as pressure bears in a top down fashion.

When each person in the tier believes there is little likelihood of any discrepancies being discovered then mutually they may agree to ignore any inaccuracies if not exactly whitewash them or make the audit invalid or a complete sham.

So these two remedies random and tiered auditing regularly will completely guarantee the highest possible accuracy of the register of Portable Appliance equipment needing testing and thus control the cost.

Frequent auditing can be done by a senior member of staff who it is certain will not to fudge the issue this can be done on a weekly basis say by the building facilities manager and then this audit could be audited monthly by his manager.

The audit itself should be in 2 parts checking the audit of those people lower down the audit trail for the accuracy of their audit and also selecting completely random items on the equipment register and going out and directly auditing them as the lowest person in the audit trail will do for their actual existence.

This prevents the possibility of a manufactured audit and is some ways more important than auditing the auditors. How thorough you want to be will depend upon exactly how much money you are willing to waste paying for testing phantom equipment. This may relate to how much you are currently spending on portable appliance testing.

If you have an ever increasing cost burden for portable equipment testing then you may well consider backing this auditing up with completely independent audit from an auditing company who has no other connections with you the client company but is the agent of you the client company and carries out a survey of all the equipment on site just as in the same way stock take is completed.

They bring their findings of this survey to the management the existing register of equipment is brought in and the two are compared. If independent auditing is carried out relatively frequently and not on any kind identifiable cyclical period then there will be an incentive for the register to be kept within acceptable levels of reasonable accuracy of a few percent and absolutely no more than 5% inaccurate by those concerned.

As managers you should make clear that higher levels of inaccuracy where the register may contain as many as 25% of phantom items or more each being recorded as satisfactory could be deemed as a breach of honesty and possibly even fraud.

I am not selling you a service this information is given to you for free and gratis in order that it may assist you to manage your own maintenance budget better.

Part II

Other aspects of better Management of Portable Appliance Testing include the review of the cycle of testing of equipment. Those items on a short cycle (i.e. needing frequent testing) are seen to be a greatest risk and it is the equipment that is in regular use and/or in a severe or harsh environment that may need much more frequent inspection and/or testing.

Example a workshop item such as a cement mixer in contact with moisture and abrasive and caustic materials and chemicals could be deemed to need frequent inspection and regular testing whereas the CEO’s secretary’s computer where the secretary is mostly the sole user of the equipment which never moves and the secretary conducts a user check as a daily and regular routine may need testing on a broader cycle (much less frequently).

Than on similar equipment used by different users when no user feels they have responsibility for the equipment and might be situated in an organically changing environment. Let me remind you that this same equipment might comprise as many as 5 items on the register.

If the cycle frequency is misjudged or not kept under review then remember again the cost can spiral and can do so until it is out of control and becomes a much larger part of your maintenance budget.

Let me quote an historical problem over cost when calculators first became available then this was seen as a boon to those government departments such as the IRS. They purchased thousands including mains leads to save on batteries; early calculators did have a bigger drain on power and did not have advantages such as switching off after a time or period of none use or photo cell power systems.

Every calculator was required to be recorded therefore onto the Portable Appliance Testing register because of its mains lead, as effectively the lead needed to be tested. As the lead arrangement comprised a plug-top transformer combined therefore any lead away from the plug-top transformer was at Extra Low Voltage. The system was a Class II system that is not requiring an earth so there was nothing really to test.

The only thing that could be done was a visual inspection and the user could easily manage this i.e. as a user check certainly the frequency of testing could be widened out, as the risk was small.

The IRS in the end decided it was much more cost effective to move entirely to the supply of batteries and then eventually switched to Photocell calculators to diminish any shrinkage that took place in battery supply.

This is a useful allegory for IT equipment and the proper understanding and management of a Portable Appliance Testing scheme. Those who understand portable appliance testing also understand the equipment that they are testing but can you rely on them to advise you properly on this matter.

IT equipment and all electronic equipment cannot be directly exposed to any Portable Appliance Test as it will be damaged, all IT equipment and all electronic equipment uses Extra Low Voltage and direct current where as the mains is Low Voltage and alternating current. It has to be stepped down via a transformer and rectified by electronics inside the IT equipment even this internal power supply unit cannot be directly exposed to any Portable Appliance Test, as it will be damaged.

The actual equipment itself can only be inspected therefore for evidence of damage. The part of the system that can be tested and is at the greatest risk and places the users at risk is the lead. These leads are standard therefore if your Portable Appliance Testing is being managed correctly then this manager will have the knowledge and the wisdom to know that the best way to do this is to have a surplus of these leads they can be purchased or may be simply retained if serviceable when obsolete equipment was passed for scrap.

These leads are tested inspected and recorded and entered in the register. A location then is moved into that has IT equipment needing to be inspected. The existing lead removed a pre-tested lead installed the item can be labelled as serviceable until the cycle completes again and the leads removed for inspection and testing in a separate location where if serviceable they are made ready for the process to be repeated at the next location. Failed leads can be scrapped and deleted from the register and replacements ordered.

These examples should indicate the importance of proper management and understanding of Portable Appliance Testing and the equipment. Do not expect that the operatives doing the work will tell how to operate or manage the system efficiently, if it becomes too effective then their position may become redundant or you may want them to take on other duties as an alternative.

There are many pitfalls that can apply when trying to simply comply with the current legislation these are just some. Can managers afford to be ignorant yet if this is not their specialism how are they to know. Advice and simple explanation is not easy to come by and everyone is always pressed for time. Remember this has been a problem that managers have faced historically.

Part III

In the time when Samuel Pepys ran the naval dockyards a Chatham Pepys who was not a stupid man recorded in his diary this about workmen employed to do work on the roof of his house.

Day after day they sat around unable to work. He asked them why the did not start the reply came that they where waiting for the scantlings it was the reply of a cunning man and a shrewd judge of humanity who gauged that Pepys wouldn’t know what scantlings were and did not want to lose face or look foolish by asking what the scantlings were. However when given the opportunity though and in the company of someone willing to provide the answer without a vested interest he did ask and was told that scantlings was a term used by journeymen of the time for measurements. Pepys then knew he that he was being made a fool of and determined to confront the workers, which he duly did.

You are being offered here the same opportunity for council and advice completely free.

Squidoo Lens

Find my Squiddo Lens at the address below

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/new_workshop/portableappliancettesting