The ECS Card is a CSCS Card affiliate for all electrotechnical professions. As a CSCS Card affiliate the ECS Card is used as evidence of your skill and competence in your chosen electrical trade. It’s colour coded with a stripe that shows the Electrical NVQ Level you have achieved. It’s also endorsed by CSCS to show that you have passed the ECS Health, Safety & Environment Test – the Health Safety Test equivalent for electrotechnical employees.
The Electrical NVQ is used as an industry wide mark of your current skills, knowledge and ability to perform your trade in every situation.
As such, the ECS Card assures your prospective employer of a predictable and sustainable standard of work.
Health and Safety and the ECS Card
The electrotechnical services have a high standard of Health and Safety for obvious reasons. Electricity and building sites are both potentially dangerous. Mix the two together and you have a cocktail that can be excessively hazardous in unskilled hands. The ECS Card, as a CSCS Card affiliate, proves that you have a recent pass in the Health Safety Test equivalent for the electrotechnical services, the ECS Test. From the point of view of an employer that means two bases are covered.
Your employer can tell, from your possession of the ECS Card, that you have a pass mark in the right Health Safety Test; and he or she can also comply with due diligence expectations in current Health and Safety Law. Your ECS Card is proof that you’ve got the Health and Safety knowledge you need, which is of course imperative for employers for whom Health and Safety is a primary concern; and it’s also proof that your employer has done everything reasonable to assure the standards of Health and Safety onsite.
Career Advancement and the ECS Card
Just as the ECS Card makes it more likely for you to be employed, so it gives you the opportunity to follow a recognised path to better work. The ECS Card is colour coded just like its CSCS Card equivalent, with coloured stripes denoting the Electrical NVQ you have achieved. As you achieve the Higher Levels of Electrical NVQ (Levels 3, 4 and 5), the whole ECS Card becomes coloured instead of just the stripe.
The achievement of an Electrical NVQ Level 4 can get you a job as a Technician (the electrotechnical services’ equivalent of what CSCS describes as a Supervisor). Holding an Electrical NVQ Level 5 makes you eligible, with the right job, for a Platinum ECS Card for Managers.
The Relationship Between Your Job and Your ECS Card
When you get into the higher echelons of electrotechnical employment, your job dictates your ECS Card – rather than the ECS Card you have achieved making it possible for you to apply for more rewarding kinds of jobs.
Beyond the Gold ECS Card for Skilled Workers (equivalent to the Gold CSCS Card for Highly Skilled Workers), your position will require that you pass an Electrical NVQ and get your ECS Card as required: so when you are promoted to the position of Technician, part of your promotion will involve getting the Electrical NVQ Level 4 and applying for a Gold Technician’s ECS Card.