Without electricity, we wouldn’t have commercial buildings. Electricity gives us lighting, heating, and cooling. It also powers the machines that provide services, whether that’s a POS system at a store, a refrigerator at a supermarket, or a ventilator at a hospital.
When a building’s electrical health is less than stellar, outages and even safety hazards can occur. Commercial buildings need regular electrical health checks to be able to provide goods and services, especially life-sustaining ones like groceries and medical care.
Hidden Costs of Neglecting Regular Inspections
While it may cost a bit of time and money to call out an electrician to perform a thorough inspection, the cost of not hiring one is even greater. Regular inspections have an up-front cost, but they will save you money in the long run. An inspection can catch a problem before you have to make a costly repair and even prevent property damage.
Lost Productivity
A preventable electrical malfunction can potentially leave your building without power for several hours while you wait for a licensed electrician to diagnose and repair the problem. Those hours spent out of commission can lead to lost revenue from missed sales or an inability to perform services.
On top of that, preventable electrical hazards can hurt your employees and leave them out of commission for a while. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), 2,380 workers suffered nonfatal electrical injuries in 2020. Workers in service occupations made up 26% of those, more than the construction industry. Approximately 40% of those employees spent at least one week away from work, with many spending more than 30 days away due to their injuries.
Hazards to Employees and Customers
Human health and safety are more important than productivity. GFCIs are required in commercial kitchens and bathrooms, and their goal is to prevent electric shock. Buildings with faulty GFCIs can place their employees and customers at risk of electrocution—a risk that can easily be mitigated with regular electrical inspections.
Wiring can also be damaged over time or become outdated, and an electrician can spot those problems. When they do, they can replace the wiring to ensure that it is in proper working condition and complies with the latest codes. They can also find other electrical hazards like loose connections, which generate heat and can cause fires.
How Electricians Identify Potential Hazards
Electricians have several tools at their disposal to identify and fix safety hazards.
Thermal Imaging Cameras
It’s not safe to touch live electrical components. However, electricians can use thermal imaging cameras to identify hot wires or terminals. Thermal imaging cameras require special training because heat can be reflected and cause users to misidentify the heat source, but they can be incredibly useful in the right hands.
GFCI Testers
GFCI testers may come on their own or with other tools like circuit breaker finders. These tools simulate a ground fault (e.g., someone getting shocked) and see how the GFCI responds—if it trips or if it doesn’t.
An electrician will plug one of those testers into an outlet with a GFCI and look at what happens to the light on the plug. If the light turns off, then that means the GFCI responded correctly and is in good working order. However, if the light stays on, then the GFCI is faulty and needs to be replaced.
Electrical Meters
Electricians always carry around an electrical meter that can measure voltage, amperage, resistance, and more. They can use this to make sure voltages are in range (and there isn’t too much of a drop from one end of a wire to another) and that electrical objects and wires aren’t drawing too much current (amps).
Preventive Maintenance On Switchgear
Electricians like the ones here at Kalos Services are keen observers and know how to inspect electrical equipment for safe operation and code compliance, especially as it relates to switchgear. Switchgear consists of switches, breakers, and fuses, which control power to equipment and will shut it off under unsafe conditions. A traditional maintenance will generally consist of exercising the breakers, cleaning off bus-bar debris, and re-lubricating gears.
During these inspections, electricians will look for important safety and code-compliant features, like anchorage, clearances around equipment, and grounding. Not only do these features keep you and your customers safe, but they also prevent building owners from being fined if their structures don’t comply. While the electricians are in there, they also look for signs of arcing, shorts, and cracked insulation.
Electricians also look at transformers, which take incoming power from the utility and transform it into a voltage that can power the components in an electrical assembly. They check for obvious hazards like compromised wires, broken leads, and loose connections, but they also look at the electrical drawings to make sure the fuses match. That’s important because fuses blow and break the circuit when there is too much current, preventing dangerous conditions. These drawings can be difficult to understand for people who haven’t had special electrical training, but reading schematics is second nature to licensed electricians.
Conclusion
Electricians have a specific set of tools and qualifications that allow them to find issues with a building’s electrical system before problems start popping up. Facility managers may be able to find some low-hanging fruit, such as by visually inspecting wires in sight or testing GFCIs with a proper testing tool (which you can find at some hardware stores). However, it’s best to hire a licensed electrician to inspect electrical equipment, and they’re the only ones who can make needed repairs or adjustments.
Electricians can make sure a building’s electrical systems and components comply with local codes and the latest version of the National Electrical Code (NEC) released by the NFPA. They play a massive role in keeping our buildings safe, and they offer inspections that could save a lot of money that could’ve been spent on lost revenue and property damage.
