Short answer: no UK law requires a thermographic survey, but some commercial insurers ask for one, either as a condition of cover or as a recommendation after a risk survey. Check your policy schedule and any risk improvement letters. If thermography is named, the insurer will usually expect a recent report from a qualified thermographer covering your main electrical equipment.
The question usually comes up when a renewal or a risk survey report has just landed on someone’s desk.
Where the requirement usually comes from
- Policy conditions or warranties: some policies say electrical equipment must be thermally surveyed at a set interval. Read these closely, because missing one can affect a claim.
- Risk improvement recommendations: after a site visit, the insurer’s surveyor may recommend thermography with a deadline. It is worth treating as a requirement.
- Your own duty under the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989: systems must be maintained to prevent danger. The Regulations don’t name thermography, but a regular survey is one way of showing you look for faults before they cause harm.
What an insurer will want to see in the report
The detail varies by insurer, but a report that stands up to scrutiny usually shows who did the survey and their certification, the date and the load conditions, the list of equipment surveyed and anything that could not be imaged, and for each finding: its location, a thermal and a normal photo, the measured temperature, what it was compared with and a priority. We cover this in more detail in what an insurer-ready survey should deliver.
Who should carry out the survey
If the insurer doesn’t name a certification level, a certified thermographer, Level 2 or above, is the safe choice, ideally independent of the contractor who will repair what is found. Our thermographers are ITC Level 3 and Ti is a Level 3 certified company.
How often
Where the insurer sets an interval, follow it. Where it doesn’t, once a year under normal working load is the usual starting point, with six-monthly surveys for sites that run round the clock, carry heavy load or have older equipment.
What to do with the findings
The insurer will often want to see that findings were acted on, not just reported. Keep a record against each finding of what the electrician found and fixed, and re-image repaired items under load to confirm the fix. A survey report with every finding closed out tells a much better story at renewal than one left on file.
Why the detail matters
On a London data centre build, our commissioning thermography found 16 busbar sections above 80°C under test load, the highest 103.5°C at a tap-off connection. Every one was reported with its location, images and rating before handover. That is the level of record an insurer, an auditor or the next maintenance contractor can work from.
Related answers: data centre electrical thermography, switchgear thermography, annual PPM thermography, busbar thermography at commissioning and the 7 electrical risks that cause data centre downtime.
Frequently asked questions
Will thermography lower my premium?
That is for your insurer or broker to say. What a good report does is give them evidence that the electrical risk is being managed.
Does an EICR cover what the insurer wants?
Not if the insurer has asked for thermography. An EICR and a thermographic survey look for different things, and many sites need both. See does a thermographic survey replace an EICR?
Can the survey be done without shutting the site down?
Yes. Thermography needs the equipment to be live and under load, so it is done during normal operation, with covers opened by the site’s authorised electrician.
Talk to us: +44 20 3885 7464 · sales@thermalimaging.co.uk · send us your site details
About the author: Rachael Browning is General Manager of Ti Thermal Imaging, which carries out electrical thermography surveys for data centres, FM portfolios and industrial sites across the UK and UAE. Ti’s work has featured on BBC News and ITN.