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There are risks and hazards everywhere in life, some are obvious and can be easily seen and others require more investigation to reduce the risk and remove or at least minimise the risk. When it comes to electricity you cannot see it and where it is flowing and this is why it can be so dangerous.

Let’s say, for example, you are using your toaster. Electricity flows through the elements and cooks the toast, but if it were able to flow through the outside of the toaster, i.e. the case, then you would likely get an electric shock which obviously could be fatal.

To reduce the risk of this happening companies/organisations etc will often inspect and test electrical equipment routinely to ensure there is no obvious visual or mechanical faults and then test the item to make sure it is electrically safe.

In New Zealand and Australia there is a Standard that is designed for this purpose. This Standard is often referred to at the ‘Test and Tag’ Standard and this is mainly because people inspect, then test and then tag their equipment (fit a test tag/label). The Standard officially is known as AS/NZS3760 and is titled ‘In-service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment’. The purpose behind this Standard is to give guidance on how simply inspection and testing can be done to help reduce the risk of unsafe electrical equipment being in operation. Here’s a quote from the Scope of the Standard ‘In-service testing is a necessary part of any safety program to help ensure the safety of person using electrical equipment in the workplace. This Standard specifies…..and provides a cost-effective approach to safety….’. It is meant to be a short, simple procedure ie inspect it, test it and then tag it to show it was safe when tested. Note; a test date and a retest date are legally required on the tag not just a month!

The testing and tagging can be done by a competent person usually using a PAT (Portable Appliance Tester) and this does not necessarily have to be an electrically qualified and registered person. The person, whether electrically qualified or not, needs to be competent to undertake the testing required by the Standard.

Records of the testing undertaken are not required to be kept according to the Standard, but we would suggest that if people are testing their own equipment then it would be advisable to keep at least basic records. Even where an outside test provider is testing for you it is not required, but we consider that not getting records including numerical test values would be very foolish.

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Most faults are found visually on appliances so the fraudulent solution is to visually inspect appliances only, without testing, and then tag as safe those appliances without visual faults. Aside from being unethical this is also potentially hazardous as the most dangerous faults, such as earthing failure, cannot be found by visual inspection only. An average day’s testing may result in 120-150 tests per day if inspection, testing and tagging is done properly. However, if you remove the testing part of the process, then you could easily double the volume of testing done daily to 300+ tests per day. Considering that most Test & Tag operations charge at lest $3.50 per test, if you can charge out an extra 150 tests per day that’s an extra $525 per day per person!

So what’s the significant difference?
Simply put, the second set of results can be easily audited so if someone is cheating they can be caught – and will be caught it they are cheating and making results up with numerical values. On the other hand if only ‘Pass’ and ‘Fail’ results are recorded it is virtually impossible to audit the results.

A second common shortcut which is also extremely dangerous, but speeds up testing, is to test all items as Safety Class II (double insulated). This effectively means that all earthed appliances will not have any test performed on the protective earth conductor to verify the condition. Please remember the protective earth conductor on Class I earthed appliances is paramount for its safety.

So how do you prevent becoming a victim to this fraud and also prevent having an unsafe workplace?

Simply require that all testing and tagging is done by reputable contractors who provide records that include numerical values. You will not normally need to pay more for these – a specialist company with suitable test equipment will be able to provide records as above, with little if any extra work – therefore the cost should not really increase.

A representative of our company has been on the Committee responsible for writing AS/NZS3760 for more than since 1998 and during this time has sought to have the Standard amended to suggest ‘where records are kept they should include numerical values’.

Unfortunately it is not the Standards’ job to ensure cheating (fraud) does not happen and as such no change has happened – at least not so far!

Remember that just because a company may be part of, let’s say ‘The Master Testers Association’, this does not guarantee creditability – past experience has shown that some of the biggest offenders can be hiding within these types of organisations and associations.

For more information see our booklet Appliance Checking versus Appliance Cheating