How to Write an Electrical Infrared Inspection Report
The structure, severity criteria and standards behind a report your client's insurer and maintenance planner will actually use — from a working electrical thermographer.
An electrical infrared inspection lives or dies by its report. The scan takes a day; the report is what the facility manager files, the insurer reviews, and the maintenance planner works from for the next twelve months. After hundreds of inspections, here's the structure that holds up.
The sections every report needs
1 · Cover & certification. Client, site, inspection date(s), the thermographer's name and certification level, camera model and serial number, and a report/certificate number the insurer can reference.
2 · Management summary. One page a non-technical reader can act on: how many assets were scanned, how many anomalies were found, ranked by severity, with the worst findings called out. If the reader stops here, they should still know exactly what to fix first.
3 · Methodology & conditions. Load conditions during the scan, ambient temperature, emissivity assumptions, and what was and wasn't accessible (panels that couldn't be opened, gear that was de-energized). This is what makes year-over-year comparison honest.
4 · Findings pages — one per anomaly. Each anomaly gets the thermal image and a matching digital photo, the measured temperatures (component, reference, and the ΔT between them), the asset's location and ID from your inventory, and a specific repair recommendation. A finding without a visual photo is a finding the electrician can't locate.
5 · Severity classification. Every anomaly ranked on a published scale — see below. The rank drives the repair priority, so it can't be a gut call.
6 · Severity matrix. A one-glance grid of every finding by severity and location, so patterns jump out (one bad MCC, one overloaded feeder).
7 · Re-inspection schedule. When each asset class should be scanned again, tied to a standard (NFPA 70B / CSA Z463) rather than an opinion.
8 · Trending. If you scanned this site last year: which findings are new, which were repaired, and — most valuable — which are getting worse. This is the page that proves the program pays.
9 · Appendix. Full asset inventory with pass/fail status, equipment list, and the insurance checklist if the report supports a policy requirement.
Severity: rank by measured ΔT, not by feel
The industry convention ranks each anomaly by its temperature rise over a similar component under similar load (or over ambient when no reference exists):
| Measured ΔT | Class | Action |
|---|---|---|
| ≤ 5 °C | P1 | Reference only — note and monitor |
| > 5 °C | P2 | Potential problem — investigate at next opportunity |
| > 10 °C | P3 | Repair required — schedule the work |
| > 20 °C | P4 | Repair immediately — priority defect |
| > 40 °C | P5 | Repair immediately — critical, consider de-energizing |
Record the load at the time of measurement — a 3 °C rise at 20% load is not the same animal as 3 °C at full load. And keep the scale consistent from year to year, or your trending is meaningless.
Anchor the schedule to a standard
NFPA 70B (now a full standard, not a recommended practice) and CSA Z463 in Canada both treat infrared inspection as a core element of an electrical maintenance program, with annual scanning the baseline for most gear. Citing them does two things: it gives your re-inspection schedule authority, and it tells the insurer the program follows recognized practice.
The mistakes that get reports rejected
No visual photo paired with the thermal image · temperatures without load data · severity with no published criteria · a summary written for electricians instead of the person paying · no re-inspection schedule · and reports that look different every year, so nothing can be compared.
The honest part: this takes hours by hand
Assembling all of the above from camera software, Excel and Word is a 3–5 hour job per inspection — which is exactly why we built DTI Suite. It reads the radiometric photos (FLIR, HikMicro, Fluke, Testo, Raytron), pairs them to your asset spreadsheet, and generates every section above — summary, findings pages, severity matrix, NFPA 70B/CSA Z463 schedule, year-over-year trending — as a real, editable Word document in minutes. See a full sample report or get 6 months free.