Commercial Electrical Maintenance & Property Management Electrician
Santa Clara County

As of January 16, 2023, NFPA 70B changed from a recommended practice to an enforceable standard — the language moved from "should" to "shall." In practice that means electrical preventive maintenance is now a documented obligation rather than an optional good idea. The standard expects a written Electrical Maintenance Program with condition-based intervals and per-visit records, and OSHA can reference 70B as recognized industry practice. We build that program for you: we grade your equipment by condition, set the intervals, perform the work, and hand back the documentation each visit so the program is something you can show an owner or insurer.

It depends on the condition of the equipment, which is exactly how NFPA 70B is structured. Infrared thermography runs at least every 12 months for normal gear and every 6 months for Condition 3 — harsher operating environments or more critical equipment. All equipment is inspected at least every 12 months. Equipment that is in good condition and in a clean environment can stretch its intervals out further, toward the five-year end of the range. We assess your gear and set the schedule around it rather than applying one calendar to everything.

Yes. Infrared scanning and diagnostics performed from outside the restricted approach boundary — through IR windows or with covers in place — are exempt from the energized-work-permit requirement under NFPA 70E. That is precisely why recurring IR scans are such a good fit for occupied commercial buildings: we inspect your gear under normal load, find the loose connections and hot spots that precede a failure, and your building stays open and energized the whole time. When a scan surfaces something that needs a repair inside the boundary, that corrective work is planned separately under full NFPA 70E discipline.

It can — this is conditional, not universal. Some carriers require infrared scanning as part of a risk-improvement plan, and some offer premium credits when a documented program is in place. The right move is to check your specific policy and risk-improvement requirements with your carrier. What we can tell you is that a recurring NFPA 70B program with per-visit thermographic findings produces exactly the kind of documentation carriers tend to ask for, so if your carrier does require it, you are already covered on the paperwork.

A maintenance contract is a program: scheduled, condition-based visits that catch problems before they become outages, with documentation built in. Reactive service calls are run-to-failure — you pay on the equipment's schedule, usually at the worst possible time, often with a coordination markup layered on top. The Department of Energy has cited roughly 12–18% lower maintenance cost for preventive programs compared to reactive break-fix, and that figure does not capture the avoided downtime, the avoided emergency premiums, or the liability protection that the documentation provides. A program turns electrical maintenance from an unpredictable expense into a planned, budgeted line.

We use a tiered SLA rather than a vague "24/7" promise. Urgent failures — anything affecting safety, occupancy, or core building operations — get a same-day track. Non-urgent requests get a defined window, on the order of around 48 hours. We set these commitments to numbers we can actually hit, and they are written into your service agreement so there is no ambiguity about what "priority" means. With a direct line to the crew, the response is fast — there is no dispatch queue between your call and a licensed electrician.

Yes. Between tenants we de-energize, demo, re-circuit, and re-certify the space, sized for Santa Clara County's high-turnover commercial stock. Code-correction punch lists are documented before-and-after and bid to the 2025 California Electrical Code minimum — the current standard based on the 2023 NEC, effective January 1, 2026. We bid to the code minimum even where existing conditions fall short, and we note the bring-up scope so the correction is defensible when you hand it to an owner or insurer.

Yes. We cover all 15 Santa Clara County cities and handle permits per-AHJ — each incorporated city runs its own building division on its own timeline, and unincorporated county sites route through the County Permit Center on a roughly four-to-six-week normal processing window. Utility coordination forks by address: PG&E serves most of the county, Silicon Valley Power serves the City of Santa Clara, and CPAU serves Palo Alto, each with its own meter-access and service-disconnect process. A multi-site portfolio gets one program and one dedicated point of contact across all of it.