Recording incorrect information in the Electricity and Gas High-Risk Database

The requirements for recording information are prescribed in Regulation 74F of the Electricity (Safety) Regulations 2010. The details to be recorded, and the manner in which they must be recorded, are determined by WorkSafe – Energy Safety.

Details of high-risk prescribed electrical work - including details of the Certificate of Compliance for the work - must be recorded in the Electricity and Gas High-Risk Database by the person who inspected the work within 20 working days of the inspection.

The Database has been set up to enable the capture of all relevant information related to high-risk prescribed electrical work, as required by legislation.

This provides owners, consumers and other electrical workers with information that gives them confidence that prescribed electrical work at that site is safe and compliant. It also enables WorkSafe - Energy Safety to analyse the different categories of high-risk prescribed electrical work being undertaken and to identify focus areas for audits to ensure that high-risk prescribed electrical work is being conducted safely and to the required standard.

Examples of incorrectly recorded data

Common examples of incorrectly recorded data are:

• An entry for a newly installed grid-tied photovoltaic system, where an inspector has ticked the Mains Parallel Generation (6A(2)a(iii)) box, but has failed to tick the photovoltaic system (6A(2)a(iv) box also. It should be noted that multiple categories of high-risk prescribed electrical work can be ticked.
• The incorrect recording of the Electrical Worker (EW) number for each practitioner involved. Some Database entries included an EW number that did not match the practitioner's name listed as doing the work.
• Cases where the EW number is clearly incorrect and appears to have been made up, or the electrical worker’s registration number, not the EW number, has been entered in the EW field.

Going forward

All electrical inspectors who inspect high-risk prescribed electrical work must enter the required details of that work in the Electricity and Gas High-Risk Database correctly.

Fields that have a red asterisk next to them are identified as mandatory. The Energy Type, Work Type and High-Risk Category fields are also mandatory. If these fields are not completed, the user will be unable to progress to the next page to continue filling in the form.

WorkSafe – Energy Safety will be focusing its audit activities on ensuring the required information is correctly entered. While our approach will be to ensure inspectors are able to correctly enter the required data, where we identify cases where inspectors persistently or deliberately enter incorrect information this will likely result in WorkSafe taking compliance action.

Resources

You can search for EW numbers on the EWRB database(external link)

Access the EGHRD database here:

Electricity and Gas High Risk Database(external link) – WorkSafe

For further information, refer to the database user guide

EGHRD user guide(external link) – WorkSafe