What does an electrician do?

An electrician is responsible for maintaining and installing all the electrical systems in our world. This includes our houses, our offices, our schools, and our factories.
An electrician who specializes in an installation will be key to building a new house, for example. It is their responsibility to look at the blueprints of the architect and make the electrical points and installations a reality. This means considering where to put circuits, fuse boxes, and electrical access points, and ensuring their installation complies with all relevant codes, and most importantly are installed in the safest and best way possible.

An electrician who specializes in maintenance is the electrician you probably called when you have had a problem in your house. Basically any problems with electrical access points and installations will be resolved by an electrician who specializes in installations. Installations can vary from fuse boxes to lights, to ceiling fans, there’s really no limit!

Electricians are also in high demand in factories and mines. Industrial electricians tend to be involved in quite different work to their residential counterparts. Much of their work is related to ensuring machines on-site are functioning properly and are well maintained. This work is generally done in collaboration with other electricians on-site, as well as management and engineers.

So how does an electrician install and maintain equipment? The first step is that every electrician is properly trained. To become an electrician requires a license, and this license can be obtained after usually completing a number of years as an apprentice. During their time as an apprentice, electricians complete not only classroom work but countless hours of on the job practice. Every electrician is trained and skilled in their area.

An electrician needs to know all the relevant building codes in their state and/or city, they need to have a strong understanding of circuits, need to know how to read blueprints and need to be able to problem-solve. It’s not always apparent at first glance where a problem might be, or might arise, so they need to be able to think about circuits and connections in an intuitive way.

Electricians use a number of tools daily to install and maintain electrical units. In addition to the usual tools that you might imagine (hammers, saws, drills etc.), electricians often have a number of specialized tools that allow them to test electrical connections, and ensure that things are connected safely and working as they should be. Electricity is invisible, so electricians need these tools to be able to confirm their installations and repairs, to ensure everyone can safely use appliances and electricity.