Category Archives: Information

Electrical Apprentice Of The Year – George Maynard

Leave a Reply

George Maynard from Leicester has been crowned winner of the 2017 NICEIC and ELECSA Apprentice of the Year competition, sponsored by Scolmore Group.

The 25 year old was one of eight competitors to reach the Grand Final, which Scolmore was very proud to host at its headquarters on Tuesday 6th June.

George comments: “I was shocked when they called my name out. I thought all the lads in the final produced some great work and they were all top guys. I think getting to the final was a great achievement to be honest. It’s a lovely way to round off all the hard work I have put in over the last three years.”

The finalists were put through a gruelling day of challenges comprising nine separate tasks designed to assess their abilities across a range of disciplines including testing, fault finding, conduit bending, tray manufacturing and safe isolation. This year’s final challenge also included a virtual reality test followed by an interview with Certsure’s technical standards director, Alan Wells.

As well as hosting the grand finale of the competition at the company’s head office premises, Scolmore also organised the barbecue and awards ceremony at the nearby Belfry Hotel and provided a range of prizes for those apprentices who made it through to the final.

The winner, George, was presented with a holiday voucher worth £2,000, runner-up Michael Costello, 25 ,from Edinburgh received a holiday voucher worth £750, while third placed Billy Stapleton, 20, from Essex received a £250 holiday voucher. All eight finalists were given an engraved glass trophy, an iPad and a kit bag containing an array of Scolmore’s electrical accessories. Every college that entered 20 students or more for the competition received a Scolmore College Pack containing a variety of Scolmore products, while the college of the overall winner, Leicester College, will receive £1,000 worth of Scolmore products.

Story Via ECN

International Women In Engineering Day Conference

Leave a Reply

In October 2016, the IET launched its social media campaign #9PercentIsNotEnough to highlight the fact that currently only 9% of the UK’s engineering and technology workforce are female.

In June 2017 the #9PercentIsNotEnough Conference will provide a platform for sharing best practice on how to inspire, attract, recruit and retain women into the engineering and technology sectors.

Timed to coincide with the International Women In Engineering Day, this one-day business conference will showcase real, practical solutions to the challenges we all know about – plus networking during the day and in the evening drinks reception.

This conference is aimed at anyone within an organisation, who is responsible for the recruitment, retention and development of women in STEM.

Featured Speakers – International Women In Engineering Day

  • Mark Elborne, President & CEO, GE UK & Ireland
  • Jeremy Watson, President, The IET
  • Nadia Savage, Director, Laing O’Rourke
  • Amanda Murphy, Senior Future Talent Acquisition Consultant, Jaguar Land Rover
  • Julie Holyland, Learning and Talent Development Lead, Siemens
  • Clare Wildfire, Chair, Advance Network and Global Practice Lead for Cities, Mott MacDonald
  • Eva Fryc, Employer Support Manager – Midlands, EngineeringUK
  • Rebecca Hourston, Managing Director and Head of Coaching Programme, Talking Talent
  • Dawn Elson, Group Engineering Director, Merlin Entertainments
  • Marguerite Ulrich, Chief HR Officer, Veolia UK and Ireland
  • Nike Folayan, Chairperson, Association For Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers
  • Dawn Bonfield, Director, Towards Vision
  • Peter Flint, Chief Executive, Building + Places EMIA, AECOM

Click here for more information.

Tech Of Tomorrow Offers More Convenient Carbon-Friendly Living

Leave a Reply

First-of-a-kind technology with the potential to come to market quickly is being trialled across the UK to improve the lives of citizens.

From schemes that promote cleaner, greener travel to online deliveries straight to your car boot – these are some of the innovative ideas being trialled in Innovate UK’s first of a kind deployment competition.

With more than 70% of people estimated to be living in urban areas by 2040, city infrastructure and design requires a drastic change in order to support a high quality of life.

Each of the projects is designed to enable a step change in innovation that will make a real difference to the energy, transport and urban infrastructure of the future. In total, 12 projects will share £18 million to develop their ideas.

The ideas

Projects are exploring the potential to:

  • take the flexibility of click and collect even further by delivering orders straight to the consumer’s car boot. This project – by Car Tap – uses new reliable and secure keyless vehicle access technology. The trial will enable 100 customers of Farmaround to receive deliveries of organic boxes
  • address the problem of disposing used batteries – one of the areas of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund – by exploring how old Nissan electric vehicle batteries can be used to store peak electricity from UK homes. There will be a 50 unit, 12-month trial led by Powervault. Partners include Nissan, Aston University, Hyde Housing, Lyra Electronics, M&S Energy and Solarcentury
  • ease congestion and problems with parking by operating a virtual loading bay. Commercial vehicle operators will be able to pay to reserve kerb space to load or unload. Transport for London Road Network (TLRN) is running the trial in Wandsworth, focusing on high-density loading ‘hotspots’
  • convert electricity into hydrogen at a mass scale to create affordable, green energy for the transport sector. The trial by ITM Power will provide energy balancing and refuelling for a fleet of 20 fuel cell buses in Birmingham
  • encourage the adoption and use of electric vehicles by making charging even easier. ZAPINAMO is an easily deployable, rapid charging system. It is trialling 2 solutions:
    • rapid charging for up to 20 taxis at once at Heathrow Airport, making it easier to park and charge and improving air quality
    • a mobile charger to serve 4 Europcar E-Car Club electric vehicles, which comes directly to you as and when you need it

A full list of projects can be found in our list of funding competition winners 2017.

Funding from Innovate UK

The projects are part of a £19 million investment by Innovate UK that invited businesses to test and evaluate new infrastructure technologies in the real world.

This is the second phase of the competition. All of the projects completed a finance and business case in the first phase. Those selected for phase 2 will now demonstrate their innovations in a commercial environment.

Read about the background to the competition.

Learn more about our work in infrastructure systems.

Apply for an innovation funding award.

18th Edition Of BS 7671 – Have Your Say

5 Replies

The IET is preparing to publish the Draft for Public Comment (DPC) of the 18th Edition of BS 7671. This is your chance to have your say about the development of the new edition of the Wiring Regulations.

Important dates

Please note, the below dates are expected dates only and are subject to change.

• DPC availability and commenting period: June 2017 – August 2017.
• IET and committees review DPC comments: August 2017 – November 2017.
• Changes approved; final draft produced; reviewed and proofread: November 2017 – April 2018.
• Official JPEL/64 committee sign off: 4th April 2018.
• BS 7671 new edition available for purchase: 1st July 2018.

BSI and its role in setting Standards

BS 7671 is a British Standard. It is published jointly by the British Standards Institution (BSI) and the IET. BSI is the UK’s National Standards Body (NSB).

Standards are developed by committees of dedicated experts. In the case of BS 7671, there are four committees that feed into the main BSI/IET joint technical committee JPEL/64:

• JPEL/64/A – covers verification and inspection and testing (Part 6 and Appendix 6 of BS 7671) plus any work relating to Parts 1, 2 and 3 of BS 7671.
• JPEL/64/B – covers cable sizing and installation and related matters (some of Parts 4 and 5, Appendices 3 and 4 and some Part 7 items of BS 7671).
• JPEL/64/C – covers earthing installations and related matters (some of Parts 4 and 5 and some Part 7 items of BS 7671).
• JPEL/64/D – covers the remainder of Parts 4 and 5, some Part 7 items and some Appendices of BS 7671).

Together, these groups are responsible for UK input into international and European technical committees IEC/TC 64 and CENELEC/TC 64, which produce the IEC 60364 standards series and the European implementations HS 60364 series. These standards are then implemented here in the UK as BS 7671.

Updates to BS 7671

As technology develops and is used differently, BS 7671 needs to be updated to ensure good practice across the industry. Updates can be in the form of an Amendment or an Edition:

Amendment – alteration and/or addition to previously agreed technical or editorial content of an existing standard.
Edition – a new edition of an existing standard will either be published after several amendments (usually, a maximum of three) have been published or a major revision of the technical content has taken place.

The committees will discuss how sections  of BS 7671 may need to be changed to either remain aligned to the international and/or European Standards or take into account national issues Any changes proposed are debated, refined and finalised at JPEL/64.

The updated BS 7671 will then be released in the form of a Draft for Public Consultation (DPC). This is when you will have the opportunity to read the expected changes in BS 7671 and to have your say.

Comments on the standard can be submitted to the Secretariat at any time but will usually be held for consideration at the next Amendment/Edition cycle.

Comment on the DPC of BS 7671

The DPC of the draft 18th edition of BS 7671 will be published on the BSI Standards development portal: https://standardsdevelopment.bsigroup.com/.

First, register following the on-screen instructions. Once you have successfully registered, you can log in to read and comment on proposed and draft standards, including BS 7671. You can also go into your Account to update information about yourself, change your password and personalize your preferences.

When commenting on draft standards, use the ‘Comment on this section’ field to make your comments and the ‘Proposed changes’ field for any clarification and to make a suggestion for improvement.

More details available here

New UK To France Electricity Connection Gets Go-Ahead

Leave a Reply

The foundation stone for the £490m project, capable of powering up to 2 million homes, was laid on 23rd February by UK Energy Minister Jesse Norman.

The new ElecLink electricity connection between Britain and France will provide greater access to the continental electricity market, and help to reduce consumer bills as electricity can be flexibly imported and exported to take advantage of cheaper prices.

The project will run through the Channel Tunnel between Sellindge in the UK and Les Mandarins in France. It will have the capacity to power up to 2 million homes and provide further resilience for Britain’s electricity supply.

A combination of domestic electricity generation including new nuclear power, gas and renewables, as well as increased access for importing and exporting electricity supplies from Europe, means homes and businesses will have reliable power at the lowest possible price all year round.

Thanks to the Government’s supportive regulatory framework, including allowing interconnectors to participate in the Capacity Market, and innovative solutions from the developer, this major new piece of infrastructure will be financed on a purely commercial basis, with no risk to British tax and bill payers.

UK Energy Minister Jesse Norman said:

As a government we are strongly supportive of greater electricity trading with our European partners in order to lower household bills and deliver energy security as part of our modern industrial strategy.

We’ve created the right environment for cooperative projects like ElecLink to attract investment and compete in the market without needing financial support from our tax and bill payers.

The ElecLink interconnector is one of the most advanced new interconnection projects across Europe and the first of its kind between Britain and France since 1986, when the existing IFA (Interconnexion France-Angleterre) interconnector was commissioned.

  • Provide a gigawatt (1000MW) of electricity connection between the UK and France, enough capacity to power up to 2 million homes
  • Reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 6 million tonnes over the period 2020-2030, by enabling electricity demand in Britain and France to be met by the most efficient generating plants
  • Create approximately 300 new jobs during the construction phase

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Groupe Eurotunnel Jacques Gounon said:

ElecLink further underlines how important the Channel Tunnel is to Britain and France. Not only is it a vital transport link, it is set to play an instrumental part in the supply of electricity to the UK, France and continental Europe.

With the debate over the future of energy security brought into focus recently, ElecLink delivers a smart, low-cost and environmentally friendly way to secure the electricity supply. We are proud to be inaugurating ElecLink and delighted to mark the official start of this great project which will significantly benefit the economies and consumers in both France and the United Kingdom.

Jacques Gounon (Chairman & CEO Groupe Eurotunnel), Steven Moore (CEO ElecLink) and Jesse Norman (UK Energy Minister) lay the foundation stone.

Story via Gov.uk