The deadline for the safety certificate has passed — what happens now

The grid operator's letter has been sitting in the pile for months, the inspection interval has run out, and now the second reminder arrives. The question that follows is always the same: what actually happens if you do nothing at all?

The answer is in the NIV (Low-Voltage Installation Ordinance), and it is uncomfortably precise.

The procedure the NIV lays down

At least six months before the inspection interval expires, the grid operator — in certain cases the Federal Inspectorate for Heavy Current Installations, ESTI — asks the owner in writing to submit the safety certificate (Sicherheitsnachweis, SiNa). That is not a notice or a reminder; it is the start of a deadline.

The safety certificate must be submitted by the end of the inspection interval. That deadline can be extended to no more than one year after the set inspection interval has expired.

After that, the matter stops being something between the owner and the grid operator. If the safety certificate is not submitted within the set deadline despite two reminders, the grid operator hands enforcement of the periodic inspection over to the ESTI.

So it is the two reminders that mark the point where things get serious — not the expiry of the deadline itself.

How long the inspection interval is in a given case depends on the type of installation. The inspection interval calculator shows the interval for each type of use and says explicitly where the annex gives no clear answer and the inspection body decides.

The point that costs the most

The ESTI puts it so plainly in its own information sheet that it is worth quoting: it is always the owner alone, and not the inspection body he has commissioned or any other third party, who is responsible for meeting the deadlines set.

That is the sentence most misunderstandings hang on. Commissioning an inspection body does not shift the responsibility. An owner who commissions one and then hears nothing more is still on the hook for the deadline — and, if it comes to a dispute, for the cost of enforcement as well.

For the electrical contractor, it means the reverse: the customer who passes the request on does not pass his obligation on with it. A contractor who says so early spares himself the conversation that otherwise takes place after the ESTI's invoice.

What a contractor makes of it in practice

The deadline is known long before it starts to press. It does not begin with the letter but with the last inspection — and that is in the installation's file.

Three things that make the difference:

1. Record the inspection interval per installation, not per customer. An owner may own a residential building and a commercial property, and the two do not run on the same cycle.
2. Work the appointment backwards from the expiry date. Anyone who only reacts to the request has six months — including finding a date, the inspection, remedying defects and the follow-up inspection.
3. Keep the defect list as a date in its own right. The safety certificate is issued once the installation is free of defects. With an older property, there is regularly work between the inspection and the certificate.

Who may issue the certificate

The safety certificate is issued by an independent inspection body or an accredited inspection agency — depending on the type of installation. The register of persons and firms holding an inspection licence from the ESTI is public and can be found on esti.admin.ch under the licence registers.

It pays to commission the inspection body promptly after receiving the request, not just towards the end of the deadline. The six months are meant for the whole process, not for finding a date.

That applies to the periodic inspection of an existing installation. A newly built or altered installation follows its own procedure with its own deadlines — initial verification, final inspection and, depending on the inspection interval, acceptance inspection. The difference, and who may carry out which inspection, is set out in the article «Initial verification, final inspection, acceptance inspection».

And if the deadline clearly cannot be met because the renovation is still under way: an extension is provided for, and it is applied for at the ESTI, not at the grid operator. How that works is set out in the article «Renovation and deadline extension».

Who pays for a defect list at the end of the deadline, and from when the Inspectorate decides instead of the grid operator, is set out in the article «Defect list and follow-up inspection: who bears the costs».

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Source for the sequence of deadlines: Federal Inspectorate for Heavy Current Installations ESTI, information sheet «Periodische Kontrolle der elektrischen Installationen» (periodic inspection of electrical installations), October 2017. This article is not legal advice; in case of doubt, the responsible grid operator or the ESTI decides.