Well, notwithstanding the fact that it's a little disconcerting to see a single post of mine turned into an entire new thread, and the fact that this could have been resolved in a private message rather than a public dissection:
First of all, the BIAE is a minimum standard you should look for in an electrologist. It doesn't mean all BIAE members are great electrologists. They were good enough to pass the entrance test once in the distant past, but many (and I'm sure you've seen this from your research) are now rather old women who haven't kept up with anything but the bare minimum in terms of continuing their professional development, and who certainly haven't updated their equipment. Many work only part time and aren't doing this day in, day out and keeping their skills honed. They are by no means all at the forefront of electrolysis. There's many BIAE members who are on top of their game, but there's many who are riding their BIAE membership and doing the bare minimum to stay members.
You'll also have noted that many of the members won't touch transgender clients either, and thus don't have much experience in beard removal. Removing a male beard is not the same as removing fine hair from a female face. It's a whole different game.
So the BIAE is a good place to start, but they're unfortunately not all good electrologists. Better than the average twenty year old working in a beauty salon, yes. But some BIAE members aren't much better.
Anyway, to the point. The information I was trying to get across is that electrologists work in hours. This is because they roughly know how much they can clear in an hour. An estimate on a beard might be 100-200 hours because that's their unit of measurement.
(I'll get to the estimating stuff in a minute.)
When an electrologist gives an estimate in years, it suggests that she doesn't quite get it. When estimating in years, it completely ignores many other factors, primarily how many hours the client can afford per week. If you can put one hour a week into electrolysis and it takes two years, then logically putting two hours a week in would reduce it to approximately one year. So the idea that an estimate is given in years is just odd. It doesn't make sense. By estimating in hours, you can figure out the years yourself depending on factors within your control, such as how much time you want to put into electrolysis each week.
Old deceptive electrologist trick: estimate in months or years. Then slow work down to make sure it takes that long regardless of how often the client comes in for treatment. I.e. if you agree to a two-year treatment program, then the electrologist will take two years, whether you do one hour a week, two hours a week, etc. Don't fall for it. That's the red flag I was raising.
Given that most people responding in this thread haven't even read my original post, I'll point out that I also stated very clearly "no electrologist will be able to estimate how many hours accurately". But an experienced electrologist will be able to tell you that it'll be, for example, somewhere between 100 and 200, just so that you're not thinking it'll be ten hours or a thousand hours. And they'll make it very clear that it depends on how well you tolerate the treatment, how resilient your hairs are, etc. Everyone knows that an accurate estimate can't be given, but in the practical world, the electrologist can't just say "I dunno" when asked how long something will take. They can tell you how long it's taken on prior clients, and they can take a look at where you are now and give a very rough estimate that they'll make clear is only an estimate and absolutely open to being changed as the treatment progresses.
Look, the thing about electrolysis is this. It takes a long time, and it's damn expensive. Estimate anywhere from fifty (for a thin beard after laser with some gray hairs) to a couple of hundred hours or more (for a beard that didn't respond well to laser or for hair that is not a colour that laser can handle.)
So it'll cost thousands upon thousands of pounds, and depending on how many hours you can put in each week, it might take six months or two years.
My advice: go to this electrologist and see how she feels. If she's working fast and using a modern piece of equipment (i.e. no Sterex bullshit), and if her office looks like a medical treatment room rather than a beauty clinic, and if those hairs are sliding out smoothly when she's removing them, she's probably a good electrologist. But if her office looks like a nail salon, if she's using a twenty year old Sterex blend machine, or if she ends up plucking your hairs out rather than removing them properly, then don't go back.
Finding a good electrologist is trial and error. The BIAE is a great place to start.