Electrical preventive maintenance sits differently from most planned work for one reason: the consequences of getting the work itself wrong are immediate and severe, and the rules around who may do it and under what conditions are set outside your maintenance department. That makes the split unusually clean. Scheduling, records and intervals are yours to manage like any other asset class. What the work consists of, who is competent to do it, and what must be isolated are not, and this page does not attempt them.
What a schedule contributes here
The same thing it contributes anywhere: the interval is held against the asset, the due date follows from the last completed visit, and the record of what was found survives the person who found it. For electrical assets the record matters more than most, because a thermal survey or a torque check is only useful compared with the previous one, and comparison needs both to exist in the same place.
Trend is the whole point of the record
A single reading on a connection or a single thermal image tells you very little. The same measurement across three visits tells you whether something is changing. That makes electrical assets the clearest case in a maintenance programme for keeping numeric findings rather than pass or fail, because a pass that is drifting toward a fail is exactly what the programme exists to catch.
What is explicitly not decided here
Test intervals, permitted work practices, isolation and lock-off procedures, who is competent, and what standards apply to your installation are matters for the applicable codes, your insurer and your own qualified person. They vary by jurisdiction, by installation and by what the equipment does. A maintenance schedule holds the dates and the evidence; it never defines the requirement.
Questions people ask about electrical preventive maintenance
How often should electrical equipment be inspected?
That depends on the installation, its environment, its duty and the applicable requirements where you are, and it is a question for your own qualified person. Whatever interval is set, the schedule's job is to make it happen reliably.
Should findings be numbers or pass and fail?
Numbers wherever a number exists, because the trend is the useful part. A pass recorded three times hides a value that moved a long way inside the pass band.
Can maintenance software hold test certificates?
It should, attached to the asset and the visit that produced them. A certificate filed by date in a separate folder is findable in principle and not in practice.