The lights turn on. The power points work. The agent says the building’s been well maintained.
None of that tells you whether the electrical installation can support your business, or what it’ll cost you to make it.
Commercial leases in Victoria routinely put the cost of the electrical installation on the tenant — through make-good obligations, repair covenants, or simply the practical reality that if it doesn’t work you can’t trade. By the time you find out, you’ve signed.
Here’s what to check before that happens.
What tenants actually inherit
Three categories of nasty surprise, in rough order of how often we see them.
Insufficient capacity. The single most common. A tenancy fitted out as an office in 2005 has a board sized for computers and lighting. You’re putting in a commercial kitchen, or a data room, or twelve machines. The supply won’t carry it, and upgrading capacity in a multi-tenanted building can mean negotiating with the landlord, the building’s main switchboard, and your distributor.
Non-compliant work from previous fit-outs. Every tenant before you modified something. Some of it was documented. Some of it wasn’t. Undocumented circuits behind walls become your problem the moment you’re responsible for the tenancy.
Deferred maintenance. Emergency lighting that’s never been tested, switchgear well past its service life, RCDs that don’t trip. Individually manageable. Collectively, a serious number.
The pre-lease inspection checklist
What a proper inspection should cover. If you’re commissioning one, ask for these specifically.
Capacity and supply
What’s the tenancy’s rated supply, and is it single or three phase? If you need three-phase power and it isn’t there, that’s a significant cost and sometimes not even possible in a given building.
Spare capacity on the distribution board. Not just spare physical ways — actual available current.
Your intended load versus what’s available. This requires you to have thought about your fit-out before the inspection, which is worth doing anyway.
Sub-metering. Are you metered separately, or apportioned by area? If it’s apportioned and you’re the heaviest user in the building, you’re subsidising everyone else.
The switchboard
Age and condition of the board and switchgear. RCD protection present, and does it actually trip when tested. Circuit labelling and whether it bears any relationship to reality. Evidence of heat damage or previous overloading. Whether a thermal scan has ever been done. Most of this ends up as a switchboard upgrade if it’s been left long enough.
Compliance and documentation
Certificates of Electrical Safety for previous work. Their absence tells you a lot.
Emergency and exit lighting, and — critically — the six-monthly test logbook required under AS 2293. This is the most commonly neglected obligation in commercial property and the first thing a fire audit looks for.
Test and tag records at the correct interval for the environment.
Any outstanding defect notices.
Infrastructure
Data cabling condition, capacity and where it terminates. A comms room that’s a bird’s nest of undocumented cable is a real cost to untangle. See data and communications.
Lighting — type, age, and whether it meets the lux levels you need for your use. Replacing a whole tenancy’s lighting is not a minor line item. See commercial lighting.
Power point locations relative to how you’ll actually lay the space out.
The lease clauses worth reading twice
Not legal advice — we’re electricians, not solicitors, and you should have a property lawyer look at any commercial lease. But these are the clauses that keep turning into electrical bills.
Make-good. What condition must you return the premises in? If it’s “as at commencement” and you don’t have a documented condition report, you’re negotiating from nowhere. Photograph and document the electrical installation before you take possession.
Repair and maintenance obligations. Who’s responsible for the switchboard? For emergency lighting? For the supply into the tenancy? These are frequently pushed onto the tenant and frequently not noticed.
Fit-out approval. What can you alter, and whose consent do you need?
Capacity warranties. Does the lease say anything at all about the electrical supply being fit for your intended use? Usually not. If capacity matters to your business, it’s worth raising during negotiation rather than after.
Landlord’s works. If remediation is needed, get it in writing before signing, with a date.
What it’s worth
An inspection costs a fraction of one month’s rent on a commercial tenancy.
Against that: a switchboard upgrade, a supply capacity increase, a full emergency lighting remediation, or a lighting replacement across a whole floor. Any one of those is a serious number, and they’re not hypothetical — they’re the jobs we get called to do after someone has already signed.
More usefully, an inspection gives you negotiating leverage. A documented list of deficiencies is a legitimate basis for asking the landlord to remediate, or for a rent-free period, or for a reduction. Landlords expect this from sophisticated tenants. If you don’t ask, you’ve accepted the building as-is.
If you’ve already signed
It’s still worth doing, for different reasons.
You’ll know what you’re dealing with before it fails during trading hours. You’ll have a documented baseline for the make-good argument at the end of the term. And you’ll be able to plan the work rather than react to it.
The businesses that have the fewest electrical problems are the ones running a maintenance schedule — see our commercial electrical maintenance checklist.
Talk to us
We do pre-lease inspections and fit-out work for offices, hospitality, retail and warehousing across Melbourne, and we work regularly with architects and designers on commercial projects.
You get a plain-English report — what’s compliant, what isn’t, what it’ll cost to fix, and what’s worth raising with the landlord. Not a list of everything we could possibly sell you.
Registered Master Electrician (REC 25989). Over 200 five-star Google reviews. Lifetime workmanship warranty. And when something fails outside hours, we answer.
Get in touch before you sign, ideally.
Related: Commercial Electrician Melbourne: complete guide · Commercial Electricians Near Me · Industrial Electricians
