Current Affairs - Get the most out of Inspection

Are you getting the most from your Inspectorate? I ask this because two of the most frequent questions I get asked at exhibitions, and even from the companies enrolled with my own inspectorate, are: "Why should I be a member?" and "What does it do for me?" When I hear questions like these I come to the conclusion that there is a sad lack of common sense and sales drive in some corners. A lot of good lads are letting themselves down by paying out good money to get their work inspected and then letting possibly their best sales pitch – being an inspected company – go to waste.

Ask yourself the question "How does your customer know that they are getting a good system?" The answer is that they have no idea. Unless they are alarms experts in their own right they can only judge on what they see and are told. Your job is to tell them the right things.

Load of bad companies

If you belong to an inspectorate you can explain that your work is checked and inspected on a regular basis, therefore you are one of the few companies that can guarantee a reasonable standard before you start. Any company that will not or cannot get its work inspected has to be looked at very carefully because they have put themselves in with the riff-raff at the bottom end of the market where there are a few good companies and a whole load of bad ones.

You can also explain that the police will not give automatic response to systems installed by non-inspected companies so it makes good sense to choose an inspectorate registered company that the police are happy with. Much the same goes for the insurance companies, they have always supported NACOSS but are becoming much happier with the other inspectorates and are now usually happy to accept them for domestics and small commercial systems. One thing is certain, they just do not accept any company outside the inspectorates, and can you blame them?

Insurance, what insurance?

One other good point is that most inspectorates insist that their companies be insured against wrongful advice and failure of a system to operate. Most of the non-inspected companies have never heard of this kind of insurance cover let alone put themselves out to get covered.

Let's explain certificates of compliance. All inspectorate companies must issue a certificate for every job that they install. This certificate is not an inspectorate money-making racket; it enables a customer to call in the inspectorate to act as an investigator and/or mediator in cases of dispute over the quality of an installation.

Once you have properly explained that little lot to the potential customer you should have effectively eliminated all the non-inspectorate competition. At this stage you should be able to jack up the price of the installation to one that will give you a reasonable profit margin because you will only be quoting against companies that have similar standards and overhead costs.

Why then, if we go back to the questions at the beginning of this article, am I still getting good, and even top class, installers saying that they are having problems quoting against the £199 brigade? In reality they should be wiping the floor with them. Selling systems is a skill that can be learned: you have taken the trouble to learn to install properly, so what is it that makes you draw the line at learning to sell? There is no doubt about it, being registered with an inspectorate body should put your company head and shoulders above the rest of the also-rans. The only snag is that YOU have to sell it.

One thing is certain, the inspectorates are not in a position to sell or advertise on your behalf and their role within the industry is changing and changing rapidly.

So what went wrong?

Once upon a time you could join an inspectorate and get help and advice on a variety of subjects from trouble-shooting your problematical systems to how to set up and run your office. There was an exchange of ideas via the inspector from one company to another and we all had the same goal in mind – to improve our systems and service, and to increase our profits. OK, so what went wrong? Actually, nothing went wrong it was just that times change and the goalposts had to be repositioned. It started with the last change in ACPO rules. The requirement set down by ACPO was that any organisation that wanted its membership to get police response had to become a pure inspectorate. The friendly and helpful trade association had to go.

This has now been further strengthened because the police are asking inspectorates to become UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) accredited. If you're not familiar with UKAS, they are the people who inspect the inspectorates. One of the UKAS rules is that an organisation is not allowed to give advice and then go and inspect the results of that advice.

Void in the market

The logic behind this is to remove the temptation for the "consultant" to impose all manner of expensive rules and procedures knowing full well that the same person will be going back later with his "inspector's" cap on to inspect what is basically his own work.

Even if the advice is totally wrong, the inspector is not going to fail it and condemn his own work. The other aspect is that an inspector can fail a company or a job knowing that he can go back later as a consultant and make more money out of the luckless company.

I suppose that if you look at it from that point of view they are correct and we cannot argue, so to comply with the rule the inspectorates had to change from being the friendly helpful trade association to a pure inspectorate. This has left a very definite void in the market as far as the installers are concerned. They are now limited as to where the advice and help is going to come from.

Whole package of benefits

I believe the time is now right for the re-creation of a trade organisation to fill that gap. For the better companies there is always the ECA (Electrical Contractors Association) alarms section. They offer an excellent package of benefits to the installer starting with good sound technical advice right through to being able to talk to a solicitor.

There is also an excellent back-up system if a company fails to complete a system and every member company is covered by the ECA insurance policy. There is also a whole package of other benefits I haven't the space to mention.

Needless to say the ECA has high standards and will not allow anybody to join without inspection of both systems and paperwork, so if you're not doing the job properly forget the ECA.

Those at the bottom need help

There was another organisation called SAFE but in all fairness I have had no dealings with them and I haven't seen one of their adverts for a while. So if any of the lads from SAFE would like to get in touch I would like to find out more of what you are about. You can send an e-mail or leave a number with the editor and I will call you back.

One thing is certain –- there is now a very definite need for an organisation to give that much needed help and advice to the trade in general without having to make rules about inspections and standards and the like. We all need help but it is the people at the bottom of the pile who need help the most.