Most site managers have a good electrician. Fewer have anything written down.
Your electrician is the person you call when something breaks. Everything you know about the site is in your head. Nobody else can see it. Which is why you need an electrical maintenance schedule.
An electrical maintenance schedule lists the electrical gear on your site. Next to each item, it says what has to be done, how often, and who does it. Then it records what was actually done and when.
Why You Need It In Writing
Sooner or later, someone will ask you to show what electrical maintenance has been done.
It might be your insurer at renewal time. Or a lawyer during a sale. Or your own manager, after something goes wrong at another site, wanting to know where this one stands. Or a new contractor who needs to know what has already been checked.
None of those people were there. They cannot see that you have been on top of it. They can only see what you show them.
There is a second reason, and it matters more day to day. If it is all in your head, the site depends on you being there. You cannot take leave without things slipping. You can’t hand the site over cleanly if you move on. Writing down a clear maintenance schedule takes that weight off you.
Start By Listing What You Have
Most people start by picking dates. Start here instead.
Walk the site and write down your electrical gear. That usually means:
- Main switchboard, distribution boards and motor control centres
- Any substation or transformer you own, rather than the network owning it
- Emergency and exit lighting
- Safety switches, board by board
- Equipment that gets tested and tagged
- Machine guarding and emergency stops
- Generators, UPS, solar, batteries and EV chargers, if you have them
Two things usually turn up when you do this.
The first is a board nobody has looked at for years. It went in during a fit-out and never made it onto anyone’s list.
The second happens more often and costs more. You find gear you thought was being looked after. Your electrician comes out regularly, and the invoice says maintenance, so everyone assumed that covered it. It did not.
You cannot put something on a schedule if it isn’t on your list.
Ask For the Timing and the Reason
This is where most schedules fall down. They say “6 monthly” and nothing else.
The problem is you can’t check that. Six monthly because of…what?
So ask your electrician to write two things next to every item. How often it needs doing. And what sets that timing.
The timing might come from an Australian Standard, the manufacturer of the equipment, something in your lease or your insurance, or simply what someone has always done.
Test and tag is a good example of why this matters. It follows standard AS/NZS 3760. That standard covers gear you plug in with a lead, plus your safety switches. It does not cover the switchboard itself. So if your schedule says “test and tag” and stops there, your switchboards are not on it.
The reason also matters because timing changes. AS/NZS 3760 was updated in 2022, and some of the timings changed with it. If your schedule names the standard, you can check whether it is still current. If it only says “6 monthly”, you cannot.
Working out what applies to your site is your electrician’s job, not yours. But they should be willing to put it in writing. If they can’t, ask someone who can.
Choose What You Will Not Maintain
Not everything needs to be on the schedule. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a contract.
A light fitting in a storeroom can just run until it dies. That is a fine decision. The same goes for anything cheap to replace that doesn’t stop work when it fails.
Put something on the schedule when one of these is true:
- It shuts the site down if it fails. The cost of the outage is far more than the cost of preventing it.
- Someone will ask you to prove it was done. This is the compliance gear, and it has to be there.
- If it fails, someone could get hurt. Switchboards, safety switches, machine guarding.
Most sites end up with a mix, which is right. What separates a good schedule from a long one is that you decided what to leave off, instead of just never getting to it.
Say What Happens When Something Fails
A schedule that only covers testing is half finished.
Think about what a test does when it finds a fault. It hasn’t fixed anything. It’s only told you something is wrong.
So write down three more things for each item. Who gets told. Who fixes it. When it gets tested again, then record the date it was signed off.
We see the same pattern over and over. The testing gets done on time. The repair gets done eventually. The re-test never happens, and nobody writes anything down. Your file ends up showing a fault with no fix next to it. That is worse than not testing at all, because now it is in writing.
Five Questions to Ask About Your Schedule
A quick way to see where you stand.
- 1. Can you list your electrical gear without calling your electrician to ask?
- 2. Does the schedule say how often each item is done, and why?
- 3. Is the latest paperwork on site, or is it in someone’s email?
- 4. Is anything still outstanding from the last round of testing?
- 5. If your electrician stopped trading tomorrow, could the next one pick it up from the paperwork alone?
Five from five and you’re in good shape. Anything less is worth sorting out before someone asks.
Talk to Us About Your Site
Boschetti works with commercial and industrial sites across Albury, Wodonga and the surrounding region. We have engineers and electricians in the same business, and we are licensed in both New South Wales and Victoria.
If you aren’t sure what is on your schedule, or whether you have one, start with the list. Walk the site, write down what is there, and bring it to us. We’ll make it easy and work through the timings with you.
Call (02) 6022 4003 or get a quick quote, and we will get back to you promptly.