EIC vs EICR: which certificate does the job need?

An EIC certifies new work; an EICR reports on existing work. If you designed, installed or altered something, the paperwork is an Electrical Installation Certificate. If you inspected and tested an installation somebody else built, whether last year or in 1974, the paperwork is an Electrical Installation Condition Report. The two are routinely confused by clients, and occasionally by whoever answered the phone, so the first job on many enquiries is working out which one is actually being asked for.

What is an EIC?

An Electrical Installation Certificate is the declaration that new work (a new installation, or an addition or alteration to an existing one) has been designed, constructed, inspected and tested in accordance with BS 7671. It is signed by the people responsible for those stages (often one person wearing all the hats), it carries the schedules of inspections and of circuit details and test results for the work covered, and it is issued to the person ordering the work. It is a birth certificate: it says what was made and that it was made properly. It says nothing about the rest of the installation around it.

A consumer unit change takes an EIC. So does a new circuit, a rewire, or a new build. A client asking for "a certificate for the house" after you have changed their board is asking for an EIC covering the board change, not an EICR blessing the whole house, unless they want that inspected too, which is a separate, priced piece of work.

What is an EICR?

An Electrical Installation Condition Report is an inspection of an existing installation against the current edition of BS 7671, recording its condition: what was inspected, what was tested, what limitations were agreed, and every defect found with a classification code saying how much it matters. It ends in a judgement, satisfactory or unsatisfactory, and a recommended date for the next inspection.

An EICR certifies nothing. It is a report on what is, as found, within the agreed extent and limitations. That distinction matters when things go wrong: an EICR that missed a buried defect within its agreed limitations is a different conversation from an EIC signed over non-compliant new work.

Which certificate does each job need?

The sorting rule fits in one table. Find the job, read off the paperwork:

The job	The paperwork
New build, rewire, new circuit	EIC
Consumer unit replacement	EIC
Addition or alteration, no new circuit	Minor works certificate (MEIWC)
Periodic inspection: rental, sale, insurance, "is it safe?"	EICR
Landlord's five-yearly legal duty (England, private rentals)	EICR
After flood, fire or suspected damage	EICR (often with FI outcomes)

Where clients get it crossed

The commonest confusion is the landlord who asks for "an electrical certificate". Nine times out of ten the law they are trying to satisfy wants an EICR, but if work was just done they may need the EIC for that work and an EICR for the property, and they are two documents at two prices. The second commonest is the buyer or estate agent asking for "a test certificate" on a sale, which is an EICR. It is worth settling which document, and what extent, in the quote rather than on site.

One record per job, whichever it is

However the enquiry arrives, the certificate belongs on the same record as the quote, the diary booking and the invoice, because the client's next question is always about one of the others. That is the shape Pascal is built around: the enquiry becomes a quote, the quote becomes a booked job, the EIC or EICR is raised on that job, and the invoice follows it: one thread from first phone call to money in, with the certificate locked permanently the moment it is issued.