Testing electrical equipment in the office (DGUV V3)

Electrical equipment in the office must be tested under section 5 DGUV Regulation 3 before first use and at recurring intervals thereafter. For portable equipment such as a laptop, a power strip or a kettle, the common reference value is 24 months; for fixed installations it is 4 years. The binding interval is set by the risk assessment.

What DGUV Regulation 3 requires

DGUV Regulation 3 "Electrical installations and equipment" obliges the employer to have electrical installations and equipment tested for proper condition: before first use, after modification or repair before being put back into service, and at defined intervals thereafter. Intervals must be set so that defects are detected in good time.

The duty has a counterpart in state law:

• section 5 ArbSchG: assessment of the hazards arising from work equipment.
• section 3 BetrSichV: the employer sets type, scope and intervals of required tests in the risk assessment.
• section 14 BetrSichV: the result must be recorded and kept available until the next test.
• TRBS 1201: specifies how tests are planned, carried out and documented.

The key sentence sits in section 3 BetrSichV: the interval is decided by the company, not imposed from outside. The values in DGUV Regulation 3 are reference values and upper limits, and anyone adopting them records the reasons in the risk assessment. There is no threshold by company size.

Fixed or portable: the distinction that drives everything

DGUV Regulation 3 distinguishes two categories, and interval, scope and tester all depend on it. Portable equipment can be moved or easily carried from one place to another while connected to the supply circuit. Fixed equipment is everything permanently connected.

This is how a typical office sorts out:

• Portable: laptop and power supply, PC, monitor, docking station, printer, shredder, power strip, extension lead, cable reel, desk lamp, sit-stand desk, kettle, coffee machine, fan heater, vacuum cleaner.
• Fixed: distribution board, fixed lighting, air conditioning, electric blinds, boiler and water heater in the kitchen, hard-wired cooker, alarm system, built-in UPS.

What matters is the type of connection, not habit: a fridge with a plug stays portable. If in doubt, classify conservatively, as the shorter interval is never wrong.

Testing practice adds a category of heavily used portable equipment: power strips, cable reels, vacuum cleaners and anything with a heating element are usually tested every 12 months rather than every 24.

Test intervals in the office and where they come from

For portable electrical equipment, DGUV Regulation 3 gives a reference value of 6 months. If the tests show a fault rate below 2 percent, the interval may be extended: to a maximum of 1 year in production and workshops, and to 2 years in offices and comparable conditions. Fixed installations are on 4 years.

That explains why almost every office test plan says 24 months although the regulation speaks of 6: the figure is the result of a permitted extension, not the starting point. It requires the company to know its fault rate. Anyone who has never documented a test cannot rely on the extended interval.

The common reference values for offices:

In non-stationary installations the RCD must be checked daily using the test button.

The test-interval calculator calculates which interval applies to a specific device for around 70 typical office devices.

Three offices calculated: how many devices there really are

The effort involved in DGUV V3 testing depends almost entirely on the number of devices, and that number is regularly underestimated. As a planning figure: around 8 items of portable equipment per screen workstation, plus shared devices. Anyone counting only PC and monitor arrives at a third of the actual stock.

One workstation: laptop, power supply, docking station, two monitors, power strip, desk lamp, desk printer. Plus shared devices that do not scale with headcount: kitchen, copy room, server cabinet, meeting rooms.

• 8 employees: around 79 items in total, about 20 of them in the 12-month class. Annual effort: roughly 50 devices. Fixed installation: one test every 4 years.
• 45 employees: around 400 items, about 90 in the 12-month class, roughly 245 devices a year. Two dates a year make sense here, scheduled floor by floor so half the business is not idle on one day.
• 180 employees: around 1,560 items and in the order of 950 devices a year. A rolling plan across the year works best, with an inventory that tracks additions and disposals.

The real effort is not the measurement, which takes a few minutes per device, but keeping the inventory current. For annual costs, put the per-device price from a quote into these figures and check whether repairs, relabelling and the fixed installation are covered.

Who is allowed to test?

Testing is a job for a person qualified to test within the meaning of the Industrial Safety Regulation, which for electrical tests means a qualified electrician. For portable equipment, section 5 DGUV Regulation 3 also permits an electrically instructed person, provided they work under the direction and supervision of a qualified electrician and use suitable test equipment.

What that means for offices:

• The fixed installation is always tested by a qualified electrician, usually an electrical contractor.
• Portable equipment is tested by a service provider or a suitably qualified in-house person. From a few hundred devices upwards that can pay off.
• The IT department is not automatically qualified. Setting up computers does not make someone a qualified electrician. Training counts, not proximity to devices.
• The occupational safety specialist does not test. They make sure a test plan exists, that intervals are set and the records are in place. The measurement is the electrician's job.

One task stays with every employee: the visual check before use. Crushed cables, broken plugs, cracked housings or a smell of burning must be reported immediately, regardless of any interval. That belongs in the annual safety training.

How a test works and what gets documented

Repeat testing of portable equipment follows DIN VDE 0701-0702 and runs through a fixed sequence: inspect, measure, check function, evaluate, document. The measurement itself usually takes under five minutes per office device. Most defects are found during the visual inspection.

The test steps:

• Visual inspection of housing, cable, plug, strain relief and ventilation openings. Impermissible set-ups show up here too, such as daisy-chained power strips.
• Protective conductor resistance for class I equipment.
• Insulation resistance between live parts and housing or protective conductor.
• Protective conductor and touch current, depending on the device.
• Function check including markings and controls.
• Evaluation and documentation with the result, a test label on the device and an entry in the record.

A device that fails must be taken out of use traceably, with the decision on repair or disposal documented.

A sound test record contains the item with a unique identifier, the test date, name and qualification of the tester, the basis of the test, the result, defects found, measures derived and the next test date. Under section 14 BetrSichV the records must be available at least until the next test.

The most common mistakes in offices

Five patterns come up again and again during inspections and initial reviews in offices. None is expensive to fix, and all five cost time and money if they only surface after damage or during an inspection by the employers' liability insurance association. The order follows frequency.

• No equipment inventory. Without a stocklist there is no test plan, only spot checks. The other four follow from this one.
• Power strips get forgotten. They are the most common item in an office, belong in the 12-month class and rarely appear on any list. Daisy-chained strips and overloaded cable reels are a genuine fire cause, see fire safety in the office.
• Private devices on site. The fan heater someone brought in, a personal coffee machine, fairy lights in December. On company premises they are work equipment subject to testing.
• The fixed installation slips through. The device measurement is commissioned, the 4-year test of the installation is not. In rented offices it also needs clarifying who commissions it: landlord or tenant.
• Intervals without a decision. The service provider tests every 24 months and the risk assessment says nothing about it. Formally, the decision required under section 3 BetrSichV is missing.

How this fits into the other duties of an office business is shown in the overview of occupational safety in the office.

Safety Club supports offices and administrative businesses with an occupational safety specialist on site plus digital, audit-proof records: test plan, inventory and evidence in one place, findable within minutes during an inspection. Our four-step process shows how to start, open questions are covered in an initial consultation.

This article is general guidance and does not replace legal advice on your individual case. What governs is the current version of DGUV Regulation 3, the BetrSichV and ArbSchG and the relevant DIN VDE standards, together with how your employers' liability insurance association interprets them.