NEN 3140 inspection app with installation register
NEN 3140 places the obligation with you as the employer: knowing which electrical installations and work equipment you have, how often they must be inspected based on risk, and who has been designated to do that work. Appfront builds the register and the app around it, so that frequency becomes a calculation rather than an assumption.
What NEN 3140 requires of you as an employer
NEN 3140 is the standard for the safe operation of electrical installations in the Netherlands and gives substance to the obligations under the Dutch Working Conditions Decree (Arbobesluit). It is aimed at you as the employer, not at an inspection company. It rests on three things: you know what you have, you inspect it at a justified frequency, and you designate people who are competent to work on it.
That last point is often underestimated. The standard recognises designated roles: the installation manager, the work supervisor, and persons designated as competent or adequately instructed. That designation is a written decision with a defined scope of work, and it is personal. If you do not record it, you cannot demonstrate after an incident that the person working on the installation had been designated to do so.
The distinction that causes the most confusion in practice is the one between the standard and a certification scheme. An SCIOS inspection under scope 8 or scope 10 is work you outsource to a certified company, with a report as the result. NEN 3140 concerns what you do: keeping the register, determining the frequency, arranging the designations and having inspections carried out or doing them yourself. Both exist alongside each other.
If your installations form part of a critical process, a second step is added to the inspection: demonstrating that the object is monitored. See the Wwke app.
Alongside the electrical inspection, powered doors and gates fall under their own regime. We cover that on the page about software for door and roller shutter inspections.
How we build your NEN 3140 system
We start with the register. Without a complete picture of what you have, every frequency determination is an estimate and every inspection round is incomplete.
Fixed installations down to distribution board level, and electrical work equipment as separate units. For each object: the type, the location, the conditions of use and the intensity of use, because the frequency determination later takes these into account.
The standard calls for a risk-based frequency rather than a fixed interval. We build in the weighting you want to apply and record who set it, so the outcome is defensible and not just a number in a field.
We work in sprints and start with the on-site inspection, as that is where the volume lies. Your own competent persons take part and run an early round with an interim version.
We set up the instruction management, with the written appointments and their scope, and hand it over to your installation manager. This includes a trial run in which we review the file against the questions that are asked after an incident.
What the app does in practice
Six components that together make up the system. Which you need depends on how many assets you have and whether you inspect yourselves or have it done externally.
Register of installations and work equipment
Everything in one register, with fixed installations and portable work equipment kept as separate types because they are assessed differently. New assets are added through procurement or by a scan on first use, because a register maintained by hand falls behind within a year.
Risk-based frequency
The inspection interval follows from operating conditions, intensity, the nature of the asset and previous findings, rather than from one interval for everything. The system calculates it and records the reasoning, so you can explain it.
Appointments and authorisations
For each person, the appointment as installation manager, work supervisor, competent person or instructed person, with the defined scope and validity. Only someone who has been appointed can sign off an inspection on the relevant asset type.
Inspecting with the scan as the entry point
A code on the asset opens the correct inspection checklist and shows its history. With twenty identical devices, this prevents the most common error: recording against the wrong unit.
Rejection with consequences
A rejected asset is blocked from use with the reason attached, and stays blocked until it has been repaired and re-inspected or removed from service. A status without a block changes nothing about what is in the cupboard.
A file that stands up to scrutiny
For each asset, its full history, and for each person, their appointment. After an incident the question is always the same: was this asset inspected, and was the person working on it appointed to do so. That answer is kept in one place.
Who we build for
Four situations where this system delivers the most value. The difference lies in the number of assets and in whether you have an in-house electrical service.
Industry and manufacturing
Many fixed installations and electrical tools on one site, with an in-house service. If this is linked to your maintenance planning, inspection and maintenance fall within the same round.
Healthcare, education and government
A lot of electrical equipment spread across departments, used by people who are not technicians. Here, the key point is that the register stays complete when something is bought in.
Operators of multiple sites
Property and facilities management, where a central overview matters more than depth per building. Often alongside your facilities processes.
Construction and installation
Electrical tools that move between projects and vans. This connects to the broader inspection log for work equipment, which also covers non-electrical equipment.
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What we deploy depends on your environment. For inspecting on site, offline use matters most; an app that does nothing in a machine hall or technical room gets skipped and then filled in from memory.
If re-inspections need to be scheduled on time with an authorised inspector, see our inspection planning software for an inspection company.
For the file on how an installation was built and modified, we have a separate page on as-built documentation software.
Why Appfront
The frequency is a calculation
Putting every object on a single interval is simple, but it is not what the standard requires. We build the weighting in and record the justification, so you can explain why this object is inspected annually and that one every three years.
Designations are the forgotten part
Nearly every organisation has a register; far fewer have their designations in order. After an incident, that is the first thing asked for, and it is the simplest thing to sort out now.
The register should fill itself
Manual upkeep falls behind within a year. We pull new objects from your procurement or asset register through integrations, so whatever comes in also ends up in the register.
Honest about what the app does not do
Inspection remains the job of a designated person, and the standard remains your responsibility. We build the system that records his judgement and acts on it; the judgement itself stays with him.
Security and privacy
The system holds personal data that goes beyond a name: an employee's designation says something about his technical competence and about what he is and is not permitted to do. That is necessary to demonstrate that a competent person carried out the work, but it is not information that needs to circulate widely. We therefore keep access tightly restricted and base reports on objects rather than individuals.
After an incident, this file becomes evidence, and then reliability is what counts. Changes to a completed inspection are logged and shown as changes, with who made them and when. The same applies to designations: revoking or amending a designation remains visible in the history, because the question is always whether someone was competent at that particular moment. A register that can be altered quietly after the fact can work against you. How we handle security ourselves is set out in our information security policy; reports from outside come through our responsible disclosure policy.
Frequently asked questions about NEN 3140
The standard itself is not law, but it gives substance to obligations under the Dutch Working Conditions Decree (Arbobesluit) on working safely with and on electrical installations and work equipment. In practice it is applied as the way you meet that obligation, and inspectors and investigators look at it after incidents. You are free to meet the obligation differently, but then you must be able to show that your approach is at least as safe; for most organisations, that takes more work than following the standard.
The standard sets no fixed interval. It calls for a risk-based frequency: the interval follows from the nature of the object, the conditions of use, how intensively it is used and previous findings. A drill on a building site needs a different interval from the same tool in an office. We build that weighting in and record the justification, because an interval without a justification is no answer when questioned.
A written decision recording that a person is competent to work on or with electrical installations within a defined scope of work. The standard recognises roles such as installation manager, work supervisor, competent person and adequately instructed person. Who needs which designation depends on what they do. It is the element most often missing and the first thing requested after an incident.
NEN 3140 concerns you as the employer: the register, the frequency, the designations and the inspections. SCIOS is a certification scheme for inspection bodies; a scope 8 inspection is work you outsource and that produces a report. The two are not mutually exclusive: a scope 8 report can form part of how you meet your NEN 3140 obligation. We therefore include external reports in the same register.
That logbook is broader and covers all inspection-required work equipment, including non-electrical items such as ladders and fall protection. This application focuses on the electrical side, with the instructions and the risk-based frequency that NEN 3140 requires. If you need both, we usually build one system with two streams, so there is a single register.
Both are allowed, and many organisations use a mix: simple inspections of work equipment in-house, and the installation inspection by a certified company. What matters is that the person carrying it out is appointed or certified, and that the result is recorded in your register. We make sure external reports land in the same file, so you don't end up with two separate administrations for the same thing.
By letting it fill itself. Manual upkeep falls behind within a year, because equipment is bought without anyone thinking of the register. We integrate with your procurement or asset register, and have each object scanned on first use so it gets added. We also plan a labelling round during rollout, because the existing stock will not become complete on its own over time.
That depends on the number of objects, whether you want both installations and work equipment, and which integrations are involved. The inspection app is usually quick to become useful; instruction management is limited work with a high return; getting the existing register complete takes the most time, and that is work for your own people. We will give you a reasoned estimate after the discovery phase.
Ready to build an NEN 3140 system?
Tell us how many installations and work equipment items you have and how the frequency is currently determined, and we'll help you think through the register, the weighting and the management of instructions. We build this as a standalone application and as part of a broader custom software or app project.