--- title: "What a Scheme Assessor Looks For - And How to Stay Audit-Ready" slug: "what-scheme-assessors-look-for" excerpt: "The annual assessment comes round once a year. The work that earns it happens every other day." date: 2026-06-05T00:00:00.000Z author: "Shine Forms Team" category: "Tips & Guides" tags: [] featuredImage: "/images/What a Scheme Assessor Looks For - And How to Stay Audit-Ready.png" draft: false metaTitle: "What an Electrical Scheme Assessor Looks For | Shine Forms" metaDescription: "What an electrical scheme assessor checks during the annual NICEIC or NAPIT visit. A guide for QSs on certificates, signatures, calibration and staying audit-ready." --- The annual assessment comes round once a year. The work that earns it happens every other day. Whatever scheme you're with - NICEIC, NAPIT, ELECSA or another - the visit follows a similar shape. An assessor turns up, reviews your office paperwork and records, talks to the QS, and goes out to recent jobs. The aim is to see whether the work going out under your name reflects what the scheme expects. The point isn't to catch you out. It's to check you're working the way you said you'd be working. ## What the Visit Looks Like A full annual assessment can take most of a day. The assessor wants to meet the QS and, where applicable, the Principal Duty Holder. They review paperwork, check test equipment, and pick a sample of recent jobs to inspect on site and review the certificates for. You don't choose which jobs they pick. That last bit is the part most contractors underestimate. The assessor wants to see a spread of work, not just the polished EICR you wrote up last week. So the standard has to hold across every certificate, on every job. ## The Certificates Certificates are where most of the assessment time gets spent. The assessor is looking for: - Completeness. Every field filled, every test result entered, no gaps. - Consistency. Different engineers across the team producing the same shape of certificate, with the same checks applied the same way. - The right edition. From 15 October, every new certificate has to reference Amendment 4. That last point is harder than it sounds. During the transition window, work designed under the previous edition can still be certified under it. Mixing editions inside one project is the trap. ## Signatures Signatures get pulled up more often than most other things on a certificate. The rule is straightforward. The engineer who carried out the inspection and the person who authorised the report both need to sign. Two roles, two signatures, both clear. That is for EICs, EICRs and Minor Works. If your team isn't tight on this already, [How Amendment 4 Affects Your Certificates](https://www.shineforms.co.uk/blog/2026/4/amendment-4-certificates) covers what changed. ## Calibration Records Test equipment has to be in calibration, and you have to be able to prove it. The assessor will ask to see the records. They'll usually want the calibration certificates matched against the equipment serial numbers, not a vague paper trail. Go through your kit before the visit. Anything outside its calibration window is going to get flagged. ## Qualified Supervisor Review The QS has to be active in the work, with evidence behind it. The assessor wants to see certificates that have been reviewed, things flagged and corrected, an audit trail showing the QS doing the job. Without that, the visit gets harder. A QS reviewing five engineers' work by eye, on paper, with no record of what was looked at and when, is doing the job invisibly. From the assessor's side, invisible is the same as not done. Year-Round, Not the Week Before The contractors who breeze through the assessment are the ones whose work doesn't need a tidy-up beforehand. The day-to-day standard is already where it needs to be. If the certificates going out from your team this week would pass an assessment, you're audit-ready. If they wouldn't, the gap shows up whenever the visit happens. Aim for assessment day to look like any other day. ## Where Shine Forms Fits In Most of what an assessor checks is consistency. The same standards applied the same way, by every engineer, on every job. Shine Forms keeps that consistent for you. The regulation checks come from BS 7671 verified directly against BS 7671 by someone who helps write it, so every engineer applies the same edition the same way. Observations and limitation notes are captured as you go, so nothing gets dropped. The audit trail comes built in. What each engineer entered, what got reviewed, when. That doesn't replace the QS. It gives the QS something solid to review against, and the assessor something tidy to look at. For more on how the regulation side works, read [What We Mean By "Regulation Intelligence" (And Why It's Not AI).](https://www.shineforms.co.uk/blog/2026/3/regulation-intelligence)