A commercial inspection sits at the intersection of three things: the site's actual safety state, the insurer's risk model, and the building manager's compliance file. A useful inspection serves all three. It tells the property owner what's going on inside the switchboards, gives the insurer a defensible record that the site was compliant at a given date, and gives the building manager a remediation plan that fits inside the year's facilities budget. Millar Electrics carries out commercial electrical safety inspections across Melbourne's eastern suburbs for periodic compliance, insurer audits, pre-purchase due diligence and post-incident verification.
What we test
A typical commercial inspection covers the main and any sub-boards (visual condition, earthing integrity, RCD trip-time and trip-current under load, insulation resistance on a representative cross-section of circuits, earth fault loop impedance), the emergency exit and escape lighting test record (with a quick verification on site), the smoke and fire-detection electrical interface, and a thermographic survey of every switchboard and distribution panel, the only reliable way to find a degraded joint or overloaded termination before it fails into an outage or a fire. Larger sites add sample testing of accessible cable runs and risers; complex sites add coordination with the building manager's existing maintenance log.
Reports your insurer will accept
The report is the deliverable. Severity-banded findings, dated photographs, the AS/NZS 3000 clause each finding references, indicative remediation cost, and a cover certificate stating the inspection date, the standard and the inspector. Where your insurer or broker has a specific reporting template, we'll fill theirs rather than reinvent it. We've reported into most of the major Australian commercial insurers and into the risk surveys that warehouse and large-tenancy sites typically face.
When to book one
At minimum, aligned to insurance policy renewal and any post-incident verification the policy requires. AS/NZS 3019 sets the method and scope for periodic assessment; the interval comes from a risk assessment and the relevant regulator, and shortens where the lease, body corporate or insurer asks for a more frequent cadence. Other natural trigger points: a new building manager taking over a site they don't have history on, a recent fitout or change of use that altered loads, repeated nuisance tripping with no obvious cause, and any burning-smell incident that needs documented closure.
Standards we work to
The inspection is measured against AS/NZS 3000, with test methods and pass thresholds (insulation resistance, earth fault loop impedance, RCD trip-time) following AS/NZS 3017 and the periodic-inspection framework in AS/NZS 3019. Thermography findings are severity-banded by temperature rise against ambient and against similar components, the format most insurer remediation programs expect. Each finding in the report cross-references the relevant clause so remediation can be matched against the standard rather than re-litigated.