Building managers carry a particular version of this problem. You are responsible for electrical infrastructure you did not install, cannot see inside, and cannot take offline — in a building full of tenants who will notice immediately if you try.
Thermography suits that situation better than almost any other inspection method, for reasons that have as much to do with logistics as with engineering.
No outage, no tenant notification
The survey happens on live, loaded boards. Nothing is switched off, no tenancy loses power, and no notice period is required.
For a multi-tenanted building this is the difference between a job that can be booked next week and one that needs six weeks of coordination. The practical constraint is not power — it is access: lift bookings, after-hours arrangements for tenancy boards, and an electrician to remove and refit covers.
It covers the boards nobody looks at
A typical commercial building has a main switchboard that gets attention and a long tail of distribution boards that do not: floor boards, tenancy boards, plant room boards, lift and fire panels, car park and common property boards.
The tail is where problems accumulate, because it is where alterations happen. Every tenancy fitout, every added circuit, every re-termination is an opportunity for a connection to be left slightly under torque. Those are the boards a survey is most likely to find something on.
Pricing reflects that: additional distribution boards inspected on the same site visit cost a fraction of the main switchboard, so covering the whole building is rarely the expensive option it sounds like.
It produces a document you can hand upward
A building manager's problem is frequently not knowing — it is demonstrating.
An owners' committee asking whether the building's electrical infrastructure is safe does not want reassurance. A report that names every board, gives measured temperature differences, assigns priority ratings and states repair timeframes answers the question in a form that can be minuted, filed and produced again in two years.
The same document satisfies the annual thermographic inspection condition that most commercial insurers now attach at renewal, which is increasingly the reason the survey gets commissioned in the first place.
It turns budget requests into evidence
Capital requests for electrical work are difficult to make on general principle and easy to make with a measured finding attached.
"The main switchboard is getting old" is an opinion. "Phase C on the incoming main switch is running 34 °C above phases A and B under the same load, classified Priority 1, immediate repair recommended" is a work order that approves itself.
Over successive surveys it gets better still. A connection warming year on year justifies planned replacement long before it justifies an emergency callout, and a board that stays clean for three years justifies leaving it alone.
What you need to arrange
- A board list — location and description of every board to be surveyed. If you do not have one, the first survey produces it.
- Access — keys, lift bookings, tenancy arrangements, plant room access.
- Cover removal and refit on boards that require it — carried out by a licensed electrician, which we arrange.
- Normal operating load — the building running as it usually does. Not a weekend when the plant is idle.
- Somewhere for the report to live — it is worth more as a series than as a one-off.
What to look for in a provider
- ISO 18436-7 Category 2 certification, with the certification number available on request. Capturing images is easy; classifying findings is the qualified part.
- Radiometric cameras, so every pixel carries a temperature and the analysis can be done afterwards rather than guessed on site.
- A written report with measurements, not a photo set. If there are no reference temperatures, there are no findings.
- A stated turnaround. Ours is within 24 hours of the inspection, with anything urgent raised with the site contact on the day.
We survey commercial buildings, body corporates and strata across the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane. The electrical thermography page sets out the method and shows real findings, and the switchboard estimator will price a building from a board count before you call.