What Your Facility Needs in Place To Comply With NFPA 70B
The NFPA 70B is the Standard for Electrical Equipment Maintenance, published by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). And in 2023, they changed one element that matters more than any of the technical updates: it made electrical equipment maintenance enforceable.
If your building relies on gear like transformers or switchgear, but you aren't keeping a paper trail of your maintenance, it can put you in a tough spot with regulators and insurance companies.
Beyond the legal headache, you're also much more likely to experience a sudden breakdown because nobody was monitoring the hardware's condition.
With that in mind, our team at Blue Runner Switchgear put together this guide on what compliance looks like in practice for a facility.
What Changed in 2023 With the NFPA 70B Plan
For about four decades, NFPA 70B was a suggestion. A good one that well-run facilities follow, but it’s still optional. The 2023 update ended that. Now, insurers and regulators can hold you to it as an enforceable standard.
The facilities facing the highest risk aren't necessarily those skipping maintenance entirely. Instead, the danger lies in locations where work is being done but never recorded.
If maintenance isn't documented, it’s effectively invisible, and invisible efforts won’t protect a company when regulators or inspectors begin an investigation.
Your NFPA 70B Plan Checklist
Here’s a checklist you can use as a starting point to assess where your facility’s program stands:
Written Documentation Strategy
Ensure your facility has a living document that defines scope, responsibilities, intervals, and procedures. It should cover what’s maintained, who maintains it, how often, and what constitutes a pass or a flag.
Risk-Based Maintenance Intervals
One schedule doesn't fit every piece of equipment. The standard uses a criticality-based model—your main switchgear lineup, which takes the whole facility offline when it faults, needs tighter inspection cycles than a secondary panel serving non-critical loads.
Document the assets that fall into their respective category and why. That reasoning is part of what auditors look for.
Qualified Personnel and Third-Party Testing
Some tasks require outside expertise, including:
- Commissioning after new installations.
- Conducting post-fault verification after a breaker operation or a protective relay trip.
- Testing aging gear that hasn't had documented work in years.
These are all tasks where NETA-certified acceptance and maintenance testing fit in.
Thermal Imaging on a Defined Schedule
A thermal scan catches developing hot spots, such as loose connections, overloaded circuits, and failing components, before they cause an unplanned outage or worse.
Thermal imaging should be part of any NFPA 70B-compliant program, not a one-time event.
Trending Data Across Inspection Cycles
A single test result tells you the condition of equipment at a moment in time. Trending data tells you whether it's getting better or worse. Contact resistance that's slowly climbing over three inspection cycles is a warning sign.
Without records, you'll never see it coming.
Complete, Retrievable Maintenance Records
Have all your paperwork ready to go, from test reports and infrared scans to general equipment history and any fixes you've made. If an inspector or your insurance company comes knocking and asks for proof, you need records that can withstand their scrutiny.
Clean Up Your Business's NFPA 70B Plan With Electrical Maintenance Services
If you're unsure where your facility’s current program stands, a maintenance audit is the practical first step. At Blue Runner Switchgear, we’ve been providing electrical maintenance services for more than 25 years, serving facilities across the United States of America, with our headquarters in Cave City, KY. We provide written reports with every service, so your program is always audit-ready.
Start with low- and medium-voltage switchgear testing if you haven't had documented work done recently, and build from there. Most facilities find gaps when they look closely. Close those gaps on your schedule, not after something goes wrong.
Ready to get started? Request a consultation today to chat with a member of our team.
