I once walked into a switchgear room I could barely get the door open on.

It was a takeover. We were assuming operations on a building that had been open about eight years, and the construction crew turned it into a storage room and no one ever cleaned it out. Leftovers from the day the building opened. Boxes stacked against the equipment. The lights were burned out and the room was damp.

No electrical room should have anything stored in it. That isn’t my opinion. The electrical code (NFPA 70, the National Electrical Code) requires the working space in front of electrical equipment to stay clear and not be used for storage. That room broke the code before anyone touched a breaker. Plus, it’s just bad practice to use the electrical room as your property storage room. Our free electrical room checklist starts with that check.

We fixed what we could. We pulled everything out, replaced every light, and cleaned the room top to bottom. Then we asked for the next step: an infrared scan of the switchgear and the common area distribution panels it served. Not all 300 unit panels, just the common area panels.

The quote was about $9,000.

The answer was no. Every year.

It wasn’t budgeted that year. Fair enough. So we put it in the next budget.

It got deferred. Then deferred again. Every budget cycle, the same answer, for the same reason: it was only a suggested compliance. Nobody was making them do it.

We never got the scan. We lucked out. No issues ever came up. But it was a ticking time bomb.

I’ve seen that pattern more than once in my career, and I understand how it happens. When a line item is labeled “recommended,” it loses every budget fight to the things that are required or the new lobby remodel that pulls in prospects. Electrical rooms don’t complain. Nothing looks wrong from the hallway.

Did you know the “suggestion” is gone?

The document behind that scan is NFPA 70B. For years it was a “Recommended Practice for Electrical Equipment Maintenance.” That is what the “suggested” ownership was pointing to.

In January 2023, it took effect as a standard. The Standard for Electrical Equipment Maintenance. The language changed from “should” to “shall.” There is now a 2026 edition.

And it is not just for factories. Its scope names large multifamily residential complexes right alongside industrial plants and commercial buildings.

Here is what it asks for, in plain terms:

A written electrical maintenance program, with a named person responsible for it
An inventory of your electrical equipment, with a condition rating on each piece
Regular infrared scans, with the interval set by the equipment’s condition
Breaker maintenance on a schedule set by condition
Short circuit, coordination and arc flash studies refreshed on a set schedule
Records that prove all of it happened

The 2026 edition added a few things worth knowing at budget time. If your building has a generator, the transfer switch now has its own chapter. Permanently installed temperature sensors can now count toward the thermal inspection requirement, so a building can monitor its switchgear continuously instead of relying only on periodic scans. And where electrical equipment connects to a network or to operational technology systems, the maintenance program now has to include a cybersecurity risk assessment.

Does the city show up tomorrow and enforce it? That depends on where you are. It becomes enforceable where your local authority adopts it, or where a contract or your insurer requires it. If you operate in a heavily regulated city, check with your local authority. And whether they’ve adopted it or not, your insurance carrier may already be asking, and OSHA can point to NFPA 70B as evidence of a recognized hazard under its General Duty Clause. After a fire, nobody is going to accept “it was only suggested.” That word stopped being true nearly four years ago.

“But the building is new.”

I hear this one a lot. The building is three years old, the switchgear is basically new, why would we scan it?

Here is the thing. Most of the panel issues I have ever seen were on new deliveries.

Think about the electrician on that job. They are landing 40 to 50 breakers on 20 to 30 different panels, plus 20 or so in every unit, on a schedule, with the opening date bearing down. That is a lot of terminations and a lot of torque. You will get some wrong. Everyone does. A loose lug doesn’t announce itself. It just heats up, quietly, for months or years.

That is exactly what an infrared scan is designed to catch. It sees the heat before you see the failure.

A new building doesn’t mean healthy switchgear. It means switchgear nobody has checked yet.

What a failure actually costs

Now put the $9,000 next to what happens when switchgear fails.

First, the residents still need power. You can keep people in place, but it is extremely expensive. Temporary generators sized to carry whatever that switchgear served. All-in, I’ve seen that run about $20,000 a day, every day, for as long as the fix takes. You may be able to get temporary utility power instead, but in the jobs I’ve seen that is still a $50,000 to $150,000 install, plus a monthly cable rental.

And the fix takes a long time right now. Did you know data centers have bought up years of switchgear production? Replacement gear is running a year or more out, and in my experience about 18 months, before you even get it in hand. Then, from what I’ve seen, add another three to six months coordinating the swap with your local utility.

I know of a new development in DC where brand new switchgear failed just before opening. It took close to 24 months to get it replaced. That entire portion of the building sat undelivered the whole time. No residents. No rent. Just waiting on a box.

Then there is the part that doesn’t fit on a spreadsheet. Electrical malfunctions caused 23,700 residential building fires in the U.S. in 2023, with 305 deaths and about $1.5 billion in losses, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. Losses are up 28% over the last ten years.

$9,000 against that. It isn’t a close call.

What to put in next year’s budget

If you are building next year’s budget right now, here is what I would put in:

$15,000 for the infrared scan and the follow-up work it finds. The scan only identifies problems. Tightening, repairs and replacement parts are their own cost. Budget both, or the scan becomes a report that sits in a drawer.
Clear and relamp every electrical room. It is mostly labor. It is also code.
Ask when your arc flash study was last done. If the answer is “never” or “I don’t know,” get a price. Published ranges run about $3,500 to $6,000 for a small facility and $6,000 to $14,000 for a mid-size one.

This applies to new and old buildings alike.

Add in the scan

This isn’t just about compliance. It is a life safety issue. It is about keeping your residents safe and keeping your brand out of the news cycle.

An infrared scan is cheap insurance on an otherwise very expensive failure, and on a catastrophic, life threatening problem that is sleeping in a room nobody opens, waiting for the right moment.

Before you hit submit on next year’s budget, add in the scan.

George Herlth III, FMP

Did you know? “Only suggested” expired in January 2023