Commercial EICRin Worcester

Sampling, the codes, and the duty behind it

Nobody tests every accessory in a commercial building. There may be several hundred and the place has to reopen. So the inspection samples, and the report has to say what the sample was. A report on a forty-circuit installation that does not state the percentage inspected is a report you cannot rely on, because satisfactory against five per cent and satisfactory against fifty per cent are different statements. The sample widens where findings justify it, which is the mechanism that stops a light sample hiding a systemic problem.

The coding is identical to a domestic report, and so is the conclusion. C1 is danger present and is made safe before we leave. C2 is potentially dangerous. C3 is an improvement recommended. FI means something needs further investigation. Any C1, C2 or FI makes the report unsatisfactory; C3 items alone do not. On a large installation you should expect a list, and the useful question is not how long the list is but how the items are coded and where they are.

Behind the report sits the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989, which require whoever controls the installation to maintain it so far as is reasonably practicable to prevent danger. That duty does not name an interval. Five years is the common one for offices and shops, three for anything wet, dusty, hot or heavily used, and your lease or your insurer may impose its own regardless. The report states the date it recommends for the next one, based on what it actually found rather than on a default.

The practical constraint is isolation. Insulation resistance testing needs the circuit dead, so the work is planned around your trading: board by board, out of hours, with a written isolation plan so the tills, the server and the refrigeration are not on a board that goes off without warning. Tell us what must never lose power and it gets designed around rather than discovered.

What a commercial inspection includes

The report, the schedule of results, and a remedial price you can put in a budget.

• Every distribution board, sub-main and final circuit recorded
• Sampling percentage stated on the report, widened where findings justify
• Full instrument test schedule, readings attached rather than summarised
• Observations coded C1, C2, C3 or FI, each located on a board and way
• Anything coded C1 made safe before we leave the building
• Written isolation plan agreed before the day
• Out-of-hours working so the building keeps trading
• Remedial work priced line by line, so it can be staged over a budget

How a commercial EICR runs

Walk the site

Boards, circuit count and what must never lose power. That sets the sample and the hours.

Isolation plan

Agreed in writing before the day, board by board, so nothing critical goes dark unannounced.

Inspect and test

Out of hours, board by board, with readings written down as they are taken.

Report and price

Coded observations, the sampling stated, and remedial work itemised so it can be staged.

Commercial inspection across Worcester and Worcestershire

Retail and offices in Worcester, the industrial units at Droitwich Spa, hotels and guest houses in Malvern, and the packhouses and growing units around Evesham, which are the ones most often on a three-year interval because of the environment. Also Pershore and Stratford-upon-Avon. Remedial work is ordinary commercial work; where a report faults the emergency lighting rather than the wiring, that sits with commercial lighting. Landlords letting residential property need the domestic regime instead, which is a different legal duty entirely.