A plain guide for facilities managers: where the legal duty comes from, the intervals that apply to different buildings, and how to brief the test and judge the paperwork.
A commercial EICR is the report that comes out of fixed-wire testing: an inspection and test of the electrical installation built into a workplace. No regulation fixes how often it must be done. The law requires the installation to be kept safe, and IET guidance sets maximum intervals, commonly five years for offices and shops.
What the law actually asks of a duty holder
The requirement sits in regulation 4(2) of the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989: "As may be necessary to prevent danger, all systems shall be maintained so as to prevent, so far as is reasonably practicable, such danger." A system, in those regulations, is everything electrically connected to a common source, so it takes in the fixed wiring and the equipment connected to it.
The regulations do not say what has to be done, by whom, or how often. That gives you latitude, and it also leaves the burden of proof with you. After an incident, the question is not whether a certificate existed but whether you can show the installation was being maintained. A current EICR, with evidence that its findings were acted on, is the standard way of showing it.
Other documents often set the interval for you, and they are harder to argue with than guidance. An insurance policy can make a current report a condition of cover. A lease can require one. Premises open to the public can carry local authority licence conditions with a maximum interval written into them. Check all three before settling on a cycle.
BS 7671 does recognise one alternative to periodic inspection: a documented regime of continuous monitoring and maintenance, carried out by competent people, with a record of every inspection and every repair. On a large site with its own permanent electrical team that can be a legitimate route. It is not a description of a caretaker who keeps an eye on things.
How often should a commercial EICR be done?
IET Guidance Note 3 gives typical maximum intervals by type of premises. The ones facilities teams most often need are these:
Five years: offices, shops, laboratories, pubs, restaurants and hotels, churches, village halls and community centres, educational buildings, hospitals and residential accommodation.
Three years: industrial units, leisure complexes other than swimming pools, theatres and other places of public entertainment.
One year: swimming pools, petrol filling stations, launderettes and caravan parks.
Cinemas: anywhere from one to three years.
Three points tend to get missed. These are ceilings rather than targets, so read each figure as the longest you should leave it, not the date to aim for. For commercial premises the guidance also lists a change of occupancy as a reason to inspect, so a new tenant taking over a unit is a trigger regardless of the date. And a mixed site runs on more than one clock: a hotel with a pool should have the pool on its own one-year interval instead of the whole building following the hotel's five.
Sampling, and why two quotes for one building differ
On a large installation, testing every accessory on every circuit is not always practical, and guidance allows a representative sample to be inspected and tested instead. That is legitimate on three conditions.
The extent of the sample is agreed before work starts. It is written into the report. And it grows when the sample turns up defects, because one faulty circuit of a given type is a reason to look harder at the others like it.
This is where quotes that look alike stop being alike. A low price built on a thin sample buys a report that tells you less about your building, even though it carries the same title. When comparing, ask each firm to state what proportion of boards, circuits and accessories it will inspect and test, and what it plans to exclude. A price without that stated means very little.
Big sites have a middle route: a rolling programme that tests a different part of the installation each year, so that the whole of it is covered inside the interval. It spreads both the cost and the disruption, and it suits a building that is never quiet.
Why fixed-wire testing needs the power off, and what that means for IT
Some of the testing is done live, including the checks on earth fault loop impedance and on RCD operation. The part that shapes your day is the insulation resistance test, carried out with the circuit dead. On ordinary circuits it applies 500 volts DC to prove the insulation between conductors, and between conductors and earth, is sound.
Surge protective devices and sensitive electronic equipment have to be disconnected before that test, so they neither distort the reading nor get damaged, and where disconnection genuinely is not practical the test voltage can be dropped to 250 volts.
In practice, PCs, screens, tills and printers on the circuits being tested need shutting down and unplugging, and somebody has to decide in advance what happens to the comms room, the UPS and anything that runs overnight.
A circuit nobody will allow to be isolated does not get a free pass. It goes on the report as not tested, which is a gap in your evidence rather than a clean result, so if the server feed cannot go off on a weekday, find the time when it can.
What to have ready before the tester arrives
The last report, and what was done about it. The previous EICR and the certificates for any remedial work since show where the known problems were and whether they were closed.
Circuit charts at every board. BS 7671 expects an up-to-date chart showing what each circuit feeds. Where charts are missing or wrong, time goes on tracing circuits instead of testing them, and that time is billed.
Drawings, if they exist. As-fitted drawings and distribution schedules from the last fit-out make a large building much quicker to work through.
Keys and access to everything. Risers, plant rooms, roof plant, ceiling voids, locked stores and tenant areas. An area nobody can reach cannot be inspected.
One person with authority on the day. Someone who can agree when a board goes off without waiting for a call back from head office.
Reading the report before you read the codes
The observation codes are explained in our guide to EICR costs and result codes. Before getting to them, check the report itself is complete:
The schedule of test results. There should be readings against each circuit tested, not just a summary page. A satisfactory summary with an empty schedule behind it is not a test result.
The extent and limitations. Whether what was agreed was actually covered, what was left out, and why.
Where each observation is. Every item should identify its board and circuit, or nobody can find it, let alone price it.
The recommended date of the next inspection. The inspector can set it earlier than the guidance figure where the installation's condition, its environment or how hard it is used calls for that, and it is the inspector's date that belongs in your diary.
Acting on findings when there is no fixed deadline
Private rented homes in England have a set 28-day window for remedial work. Workplaces do not. The duty is the general one to prevent danger so far as reasonably practicable, which in practice means responding in proportion to what was found:
C1, danger present. Expect to be told on the day rather than when the report is written up, and for the inspector to offer to make it safe before leaving, usually by switching it off at the board with your agreement. Do not ask for it to be left live in the meantime.
C2, potentially dangerous. Treat it as urgent. If the repair cannot happen straight away, record the interim measure, such as a circuit taken out of use or an area closed off, and who made that decision.
FI, further investigation. Book the investigation promptly. Until it is done you do not know whether you have a serious fault or nothing at all, and that uncertainty is itself the risk.
Remedial work is certified in its own right, and the EICR stays exactly as it was issued. File the remedial certificates alongside it, because the two together are what show an insurer or an HSE inspector that the findings were dealt with.
Running testing across more than one site
Across an estate, the work is less about any single test and more about the register behind them all. Keep one list of every site and, where parts of a site run on different intervals, every area within it, with the date of the last inspection, the recommended next date and the state of its remedials.
Use the same report format across the estate so findings can be compared site against site, and stagger the programme so that one financial year is not hit by every building falling due together.
What a fixed-wire test does not cover
Portable appliances. Plug-in equipment is maintained separately, and HSE is clear that there is no legal requirement to test it every year. How often it is checked should follow the risk, which is why a kettle in a busy staff kitchen and a monitor that never moves are treated differently.
Emergency lighting. It runs to its own testing routine under BS 5266-1, which comes round far more often than any fixed-wire cycle.
Fire alarms. Detection and alarm systems are serviced under their own standard, BS 5839-1. Our fire alarm and CCTV page covers the systems we install and maintain.
Thermal imaging. A thermal survey of boards under load is no substitute for testing, but it picks up overheating connections between inspections, which is where it earns its place.
Where one contractor handles several of these, putting the visits together means fewer days spent escorting people round the building.
We carry out commercial EICRs and fixed-wire testing across South Yorkshire, from units and offices in Sheffield to industrial and logistics sites around Doncaster, as a NICEIC approved contractor holding CHAS, with JIB-registered electricians. Our test and inspection page explains how we approach the work.
Frequently asked questions
Can we use our own maintenance electrician for this?
Only if they are competent for that specific job. Regulation 16 of the same regulations requires anyone doing electrical work to have the knowledge and experience to avoid danger, or to be properly supervised, and inspecting and testing a whole commercial installation is a step beyond day-to-day maintenance.
Read your insurance policy too, since some specify who may carry out the inspection. There is also a case for independence, because someone who maintains an installation is in effect marking their own work.
We are overdue. How exposed are we?
Passing a guidance date does not trigger an automatic fine. The exposure arrives with something else: an incident, an insurance claim or a lease audit, at which point an overdue test is hard to defend. Book it now, and on a large site start with the highest-risk areas, such as plant rooms, commercial kitchens and anywhere wet, hot or heavily used.
How are commercial inspections priced?
Usually on the number of circuits or distribution boards, then adjusted for access, working at height, the number of separate visits and whether the work has to happen out of hours. Remedial work is quoted separately once the findings are known, so a quote that bundles an unspecified amount of repair into the test price is worth questioning.
The building has had a flood or a fire. Can the power go straight back on?
Not until the affected installation has been inspected and tested. Water and heat damage insulation, accessories and connections in ways that are not visible, and an insurer may well want an inspection report as part of the claim. Leave the affected circuits off until then.
