Book test and tag in Geelong that proves your compliance

Most businesses looking for test and tag in Geelong aren’t shopping for stickers. They’re shopping for evidence. When an insurer, a principal contractor or a WorkSafe inspector asks how you know your equipment is safe, a coloured tag on a kettle lead isn’t much of an answer on its own. A dated test record, with measured results and a clear next-due date, is.

Albert Corn & Son has been an electrical contractor in Geelong for over 75 years, and test and tag sits alongside the rest of our work as a commercial electrician in Geelong. We test your portable equipment, test your safety switches properly, and give you a written report you can file, hand over or forward without having to explain it.

What is test and tag?

Test and tag covers plug-in electrical equipment. Extension leads, power boards, kettles and microwaves, computers and monitors, vacuum cleaners, power tools, commercial kitchen appliances, chargers and battery equipment. Anything that plugs into a socket and can be moved.

Each item gets two things. First a visual inspection, looking for damaged plugs and sockets, cracked housings, cut or crushed flexible cords, missing guards, taped-up repairs and signs of heat. A large share of failures are found here, before any instrument comes out. Second an electrical test using a portable appliance tester, checking earth continuity on earthed equipment, insulation resistance and correct polarity on leads.

The item then gets a durable tag showing who tested it, the date and when it’s next due.

The work follows AS/NZS 3760, In-service safety inspection and testing of electrical equipment, which is the Australian and New Zealand standard covering how in-service equipment is inspected, tested and tagged. Equipment on construction and demolition sites is handled under the related standard for that environment, AS/NZS 3012, which sets tighter expectations because the conditions are harsher.

What’s the law around test and tag in Victoria?

There’s no single Victorian rule that says every workplace must tag every appliance every three months. What there is instead is a general duty. 

Under Victoria’s occupational health and safety laws, including the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017, an employer must provide and maintain plant and systems of work that are safe and without risks to health, so far as is reasonably practicable. 

WorkSafe Victoria is the regulator for that duty, while Energy Safe Victoria regulates electrical safety and licensing under the Electricity Safety Act. The national model code of practice for managing electrical risks in the workplace published by Safe Work Australia sets out inspection and testing as a standard way of meeting that duty.

Put plainly, the obligation is to know your equipment is safe and to be able to show it. Regular inspection and testing to AS/NZS 3760 is the accepted way of doing that. 

Higher-risk settings such as construction, hire equipment and workshops carry a stronger expectation than a quiet office. If your site is on a principal contractor’s induction system, tagging is usually a condition of entry regardless of what the general duty says.

RCD testing is where most sites come unstuck

Residual current devices, or safety switches, are the protection that catches what a fuse cannot. They are also the part of workplace compliance that gets half done more often than any other.

There are two separate tests, and they are not interchangeable. The push-button test simply confirms the mechanism operates. Anyone on site can do it and it should happen regularly. The second test measures the actual trip time and trip current with a proper instrument, confirming the RCD disconnects fast enough to protect a person. That one needs a competent tester and the right equipment, and it’s the test that produces a number you can record.

Plenty of Geelong businesses believe pressing the test button each quarter has them covered. It doesn’t. If your safety switch record has no measured trip times in it, there is a gap in your file. We test both fixed switchboard RCDs and portable ones, log the readings and flag anything operating outside spec.

Compliance reporting you can hand straight to an auditor

This is the part we put the most work into, because it’s the part that saves you time later.

After every visit you receive an asset register listing each item of equipment with its own ID, its location within the building, its description, the test results, a pass or fail, the test date and the next due date. Failed items are listed separately with a note on the fault and what we did about them. RCD results are shown with the measured trip times, not just a tick. The whole thing arrives as a document you can email, print or attach to a tender submission.

We also keep the register from visit to visit, so you build a history rather than a pile of unrelated one-off jobs. New equipment gets added, retired equipment gets removed, and we send a reminder when the next round is due so nothing quietly lapses over a busy quarter.

Because we are a licensed electrical contractor rather than a tagging-only operator, we can act on a failure on the spot. A dangerous lead gets replaced, a faulty appliance gets repaired or removed from service, and any electrical installation work we carry out comes with a Certificate of Electrical Safety. 

How often your equipment needs retesting

Retest intervals depend on the environment the equipment lives in rather than the type of appliance. A drill in a Breakwater workshop, a hire generator, a fridge in a Malop Street office and a fryer in a waterfront kitchen are all on different schedules, because dust, moisture, vibration and how often gear gets moved all change how quickly it degrades.

We work out the right interval for each area of your site during the first visit and build it into your schedule. If you want the detail behind the intervals, our guide on how often you need to test and tag walks through it.

What else we check while we are on your site

Test and tag covers the plug-in gear. It does not cover the fixed installation, and the two failure points are quite different. While our team is on site, it makes sense to look at the rest.

Thermal imaging picks up loose connections, overloaded circuits and unbalanced phases inside a switchboard well before anything trips or burns, and our guide on thermal imaging for commercial switchboards explains what a scan finds. Exit and emergency lighting carries its own six-monthly testing and logbook obligation, covered in our article on exit and emergency lighting. Bundling these into one visit keeps your compliance dates together and keeps disruption to a single booking.

Why Geelong businesses use Albert Corn & Son

We are a family-owned Geelong business, four generations in, and we have been providing quality electrical services to offices, warehouses, retail shops, cafes, schools, aged care and health facilities across Geelong, the Bellarine and the Surf Coast for more than 75 years. We work around your trading hours, we turn up when we say we will, and we don’t price the job by cutting the testing short.

No site is too small or too large. Whether it’s thirty items in a single office or several thousand across an industrial facility, you get the same register, the same measured results and the same reminder when the next round comes due.

To book test and tag, RCD testing and compliance reporting for your Geelong workplace, get in touch with our team for an obligation-free quote.