The Electricity at Work Regulations (EAWR) is the UK framework requiring that electrical systems be constructed, maintained, and worked on so as to prevent danger. It is deliberately goal-setting rather than prescriptive: it does not mandate specific inspection intervals, it requires that systems be maintained to prevent danger, which puts the burden of a defensible, risk-based electrical maintenance program squarely on the duty holder. Educational overview, not legal advice.
EAWR does not tell you to thermographically scan switchboards annually or test insulation on a cycle; it tells you to maintain systems so they do not become dangerous, and leaves you to justify how. In practice that means a risk-based electrical preventive maintenance program: thermographic surveys of connections, breaker and switchgear inspection and testing, insulation resistance testing of motors, and protective-device verification, each at intervals justified by criticality and history. The regulation’s flexibility is not a lighter burden; it means you must be able to defend your program as adequate.
An electrical fire starts at a distribution board feeder termination, a loose connection that overheated over months. The investigation asks the EAWR question: was this system maintained to prevent danger? A plant with a thermographic program produces the evidence, the annual scans, the trend that would have flagged a warm connection, the work orders. If the last scan showed the connection warming and it was scheduled for repair, the plant demonstrates a working program overtaken by events. If there was no scanning program at all, the absence is the finding: a known, detectable, preventable failure mode that the maintenance regime was not looking for. EAWR does not require thermography by name, but "we had no way to detect the classic connection failure" is a hard position to defend as maintaining the system to prevent danger.
EAWR strongly favors dead working: live work is permitted only where it is unreasonable to work dead and suitable precautions are taken. This shapes maintenance directly, isolation and verification (the electrical heart of LOTO), permits for the rare justified live task, and arc-flash risk respected in every electrical job safety analysis. A maintenance program that routinely works live for convenience has misread the regulation.
Fabrico does not make electrical systems safe or judge the adequacy of a program, competent electrical engineers do that. What Fabrico provides is the defensible-program evidence EAWR effectively demands: every electrical asset with its risk-based maintenance and testing schedules, thermographic findings and test values recorded with trends, defects escalated and closed with dates, and isolation procedures attached to the work. When the question is "was this maintained to prevent danger?", the answer is a documented program, not a verbal assurance, kept under EU governance. EU-built, with EU data residency.
No. It requires systems to be maintained to prevent danger but leaves intervals to a risk-based judgment informed by equipment type, environment, criticality, and history. The duty is to have and defend an adequate program, which is why documented trends and a rationale matter more than any single fixed number.
PAT is one common way duty holders address the maintenance duty for portable equipment, but EAWR does not mandate PAT or its frequency; it requires that equipment be maintained to prevent danger by suitable means, which for portable equipment often includes user checks and periodic inspection and testing proportionate to risk.
Someone with the technical knowledge or experience to work safely on the electrical system in question, or who is adequately supervised. Competence must match the work and the system voltage and complexity; it is judged by capability to prevent danger, not by job title alone.
Want a defensible electrical maintenance program with the evidence to prove it? Book a Fabrico demo to see electrical compliance run through a field-ready CMMS.
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