Electrical services - Testing and Tagging electrical equipment
Why Test & Tag?
Australian Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) rules & legislation impose a duty of care on businesses to provide an electrically safe workplace. Failure to check & ensure the safety of electrical equipment can result in the death or injury of yourself, your employees or others.
This could result in potential fines of up to $27,500, and bad publicity.
To discharge your duty of care and lower your insurance costs you are required to reduce the risk of electrical shock as much as possible. One way of achieving this is to ensure your power leads, appliances & tools, are tested for electrical fault on a regular basis.
What does test and tagging involve?
Visual inspection of appliances to ensure electrical safety. The safety of an appliance is usually measured using the following:
- Earth Continuity (of earthed appliances),
- Insulation/leakage (of all appliances),
- Polarity (of extension leads and power cords).
Once determined safe, appliances are colour tagged, indicating that they have been passed as being electrically safe (at the time of testing). The tags typically feature the following information:
- Company name (sometimes printed),
- Electrical licence number of person testing,
- Test date and next test date.
What does the different colours on the Tags mean?
Many customers frequently ask us "what colour test tags should I use?"
The following colours are the recommended industry colours for test tags in Australia. These are applied depending on the required retest period and according to the test frequency. The test frequency is determined by the environment in which the appliance will be used.
Tag colours are not a legislative requirement. However, colour coding test tag colours is recommended - particularly on construction sites in Australia where colour coding of test tags maybe enforced by private businesses or organisations.
Colour coding schemes are also recommended by standards including AS/NZS 3012 Electrical installations - Construction and demolition sites.