Test and tag colours, and who actually needs them

The colours and their months

The rotation used on Australian construction and demolition sites runs on calendar quarters, not on the date the item was tested:

Red covers December, January and February. Green covers March, April and May. Blue covers June, July and August. Yellow covers September, October and November.

Because it follows the calendar rather than the test date, an item tested in the last week of a quarter carries a colour that expires within days. That is not a mistake, it is how the scheme works, and it is why anyone doing this regularly tests early in a quarter rather than late.

The scheme is set out in AS/NZS 3012, the standard for electrical installations on construction and demolition sites.

Why it is quarterly

The colour changes every three months because AS/NZS 3012 sets a three month retest interval for the equipment it covers on construction and demolition sites. The colour is simply a way of reading that interval from a distance.

That is the whole point of it. A supervisor standing at a site gate can look at a bank of power leads and see at a glance whether any of them are the wrong colour, without reading a single date. On a site with hundreds of items and a changing cast of subcontractors, that is genuinely useful.

It is worth understanding that the colour is a convenience layered on top of the testing, not a substitute for it. A correctly coloured tag on an item that was never properly tested is worth nothing.

The part most people get wrong

Most Queensland workplaces are not construction sites, and the colour rotation does not apply to them.

An office, a cafe, a hairdresser, a workshop, a hotel: none of these are governed by AS/NZS 3012. Their obligations sit in the Electrical Safety Regulation 2026, and that Regulation does not require a tag to be any particular colour. It does not mention colours at all.

This trips people up constantly. A business gets told it is not compliant because its tags are the wrong colour, panics, and pays to have everything retested months early. If you are not doing construction work, the colour of your tags is a matter of your own preference or your client's, and nothing more.

You can still use colours if you find them handy, and plenty of businesses do because it makes an overdue item obvious. Just do not let anyone tell you the law demands it when it does not.

What the law does require on the tag

For workplaces covered by the Electrical Safety Regulation 2026, when a competent person tests an item and finds it safe, they attach a durable tag carrying what the Regulation calls the prescribed details.

That is at least one of the test date or the date the item is next due for retesting, plus details identifying who did the testing. Those identifying details can be the individual's name, their electrical contractor licence number, the name of the contracting company, or the company's licence number.

So a legally sufficient tag is one that tells you when and who. A colour adds nothing to that in a nonconstruction workplace, and a colour on its own satisfies nothing.

If an item is tested and found unsafe, the rules go the other way: a durable tag warning people not to use it goes on immediately, and the item comes out of service straight away. That part is not optional and it is not a judgement call.

If you are on a construction site

Confirm the rotation with the principal contractor before you turn up, rather than assuming. Sites commonly run stricter rules than the standard, and some large builders and government sites have their own tagging systems that override the generic scheme.

The Regulation also has something specific to say about construction tags. A tag showing a test or retest date must not go on the equipment covered by AS/NZS 3012 clause 3.1 unless the item is new, or it has been tested by a competent person and found to comply, and the tag carries the retest date plus identifying details of whoever tested it.

In plain terms: you cannot pre tag a pile of gear to get through a gate inspection. The tag has to follow a real test.

What to do with this

If you run a Queensland business that is not doing construction work, stop worrying about colours and go and check your intervals instead, because that is where the real obligation sits and it varies by the type of work you do. Queensland test and tag requirements sets out what applies to office work, service work, rural work and safety switches, with the section numbers.

If you are on the tools on a construction site, work to the quarter, test early in it rather than late, and confirm the site's own rules before you arrive.

We do this testing for Sunshine Coast businesses as part of preventative maintenance, and the records go out in a form your insurer or an auditor can actually read.

Common questions