Compliance
Safety and compliance
How electrical work is regulated in Victoria, and what that means for a job at your place.
Certificates
Certificates of Electrical Safety
Electrical installation work in Victoria is covered by a Certificate of Electrical Safety. The certificate records what was done and who did it, and it is the document that declares the work safe.
Certificates fall into two classes. Work classed as prescribed has to be inspected by a Licensed Electrical Inspector before its certificate is issued. Work that is not prescribed is certified without that separate inspection. Energy Safe Victoria sets which work falls into which class, and the classification changes from time to time.
The document
What a certificate covers
- 01A record of what work was carried out, and who carried it out
- 02A declaration that the installation has been tested
- 03For prescribed work, an inspection by a Licensed Electrical Inspector
- 04A copy for the person who paid for the work
RCDs
Safety switches
A safety switch, or residual current device, compares the current flowing out on a circuit against the current coming back. When the two do not match, some of it is going somewhere it should not be, and the device cuts the supply.
A fuse or a circuit breaker protects the wiring against overload and short circuit. An RCD is aimed at the person who has become part of the fault. Older switchboards were built before RCDs were required, so a board can be fully fused and still have no RCD on any circuit at all.
Standards
Switchboards and the Wiring Rules
AS/NZS 3000, known in the trade as the Wiring Rules, is the standard electrical installations are built to. It is revised over time, so what was compliant when a house was built is not always what would be installed in it today. An existing installation is generally assessed against the rules that applied when it was put in, and new work is done to the current ones.
Common findings in an older board
- Rewireable ceramic fuses
- No RCD protection on any circuit
- Circuits that are not labelled
- No spare ways left to add a circuit
None of these on its own means a board is unsafe. Together they are the usual reason one gets replaced.
Who may do the work
Licensing
Electrical installation work in Victoria has to be carried out by a licensed electrical worker. Contracting for that work, and issuing the certificates that go with it, is done by a Registered Electrical Contractor. Both are administered by Energy Safe Victoria.
Energy Safe Victoria publishes a register anyone can search, so a licence or a registration can be checked before work starts. energysafe.vic.gov.au
Licence number
To be supplied
Public liability insurance
To be supplied
Next step
Questions about a job
Call the number, or send the details of the job and we will come back to you.