An insurer, a landlord, a licensing condition or a lease has asked for a current condition report on your premises, and you cannot simply switch the building off for a day to get it. Commercial testing is the same discipline as domestic, scaled up and scheduled around the fact that the place has to keep running.
Why this comes up
An insurance renewal asking for a current report.
A lease obligation, either as tenant or as landlord.
A licensing or regulatory condition on the premises.
A change of use, or a fit-out that has changed the installation substantially.
Taking on premises with no record of what is behind the walls.
A health and safety review that has flagged the electrical installation.
How we handle it
Site visit first to scope it: how many distribution boards, how many circuits, and what genuinely cannot lose power.
Testing phased board by board so the whole site is never down at once.
Out of hours or weekend work where the operation cannot take the interruption.
A full circuit schedule produced as we go, which many premises turn out not to have.
Report coded the same way as domestic, with observations ranked so you can budget rather than guess.
Remedial work priced per observation and scheduled around your operating hours.
What to expect
How often depends on the premises rather than on a single rule: the interval for an office is not the interval for a workshop or somewhere with a public licence, and the report will recommend one appropriate to the installation and its use. Larger sites usually run over more than one visit. If the building has never had a proper circuit schedule, you get one out of this, which is worth having on its own the next time anything goes wrong.
What it costs
Priced on the number of distribution boards and circuits after the scoping visit, not estimated over the phone from a floor area. Out of hours attendance is quoted up front rather than added afterwards.
Common questions
How often does a commercial property need one?
It depends on the type of premises and how it is used, and the report recommends the next date. It is commonly shorter than the domestic interval, and shorter again for anything industrial or licensed.
Can you work outside our opening hours?
Yes, evenings and weekends. It is usually the cheaper option once you account for what a day of disruption actually costs.
Will the power be off for the whole test?
No. We phase it board by board and agree in advance which circuits can come down and when. Anything that genuinely cannot be interrupted, we work around.
Do you produce a circuit schedule?
Yes, and on older premises it is often the first accurate one the building has had. It makes every future job on the site faster.
Do you cover schools and public buildings?
Yes. Those tend to need scheduling around occupancy more tightly, and we plan the visit around that rather than turning up and improvising.
Does this cover the fire alarm and emergency lighting?
Those are separate regimes with their own testing and their own certificates. We will tell you what we have and have not covered so there is no gap you only discover later.
We have multiple sites, can you do them together?
Yes, and grouping them is worth doing for the same reason as a property portfolio: one schedule, one set of renewal dates, better pricing.