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 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 FM Global / IAG / QBE-style 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 recommends 5-yearly periodic inspection on general commercial — sooner where the lease, body corporate, or insurer asks for it. 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 pop-and-trip or 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 follows the severity-banding familiar from NFPA 70B and IEEE 3007.2 (ΔT against ambient and against similar component) so findings can be banded the way 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.