Documents your EPC contractor should deliver — design basis, test records, asset register and as-builts

Every MEP or EPC contract produces two things: an installation and a paper trail. The installation is what you inspect at handover. The paper trail is what you open for the next electrical inspection, the Fire NOC renewal, the insurer, the next expansion and the day something fails — long after the contractor has left. Without it, nobody can describe what was built.

The way to get it is to write the documents into the contract as deliverables, each with a due date, a format and the payment it unlocks. This page lists them in the order a project produces them, with a checklist you can attach to the contract and a table of what to do when something is missing.

Before award: the documents that qualify the contractor

These say nothing about engineering quality; they establish that you are contracting with a registered entity that is allowed to do the work. Ask for the company registration and a GSTIN that match the proposal, EPF and ESI registrations for the site workforce, completion certificates for comparable work with a client contact you can call (how to verify them is its own subject), and accounts or a banker's reference adequate for the contract value.

Above all, ask for the electrical contractor licence. Under regulation 31 of the CEA (Measures relating to Safety and Electric Supply) Regulations, 2023, electrical installation work — including additions, alterations and repairs — must be carried out by an electrical contractor licensed by the State Government, under the direct supervision of a person holding a certificate of competency, and work done otherwise must not be energised or connected to the supplier's works. Check that the licence and the supervisor's certificate are current in your state.

1. Design basis and approved drawings

The design basis is the document that says what the building was designed to do: the loads, the design conditions, the occupancy and hazard assumptions, the redundancy, and the codes and editions the design follows. Without it, nobody can later say whether a system is undersized or simply being asked to do more than it was designed for — the first question every expansion raises. The drawings then record what was approved, by whom and at which revision.

Ask for the documents below in your format, with a drawing register that shows every revision and its status: issued for comment, approved, or good for construction.

2. Inspection and test records

Ask for an inspection and test plan at the start: every inspection and test, the standard it follows, the acceptance value, who witnesses it and the record it produces. Then insist on the records as the work proceeds — tests on concealed work cannot be repeated once the slab is poured or the ceiling closed.

• Manufacturers' test certificates, filed against the BOQ line as material arrives. For apparatus above 650 V, regulation 48(1) of the CEA regulations allows the Electrical Inspector to require the type, acceptance and routine test certificates before approving the installation.
• Stage inspections before concealment — cables tested before walls close, pipework pressure-tested before it is insulated or buried, ducts leak-tested before the ceiling.
• Site tests with values, not ticks — insulation resistance by circuit, earth resistance by pit, test pressures and durations, pump duty points, air and water quantities after balancing. Regulation 48(2) requires new apparatus, cables and supply lines above 650 V to be site-tested to the relevant standards before commissioning.
• The energisation file. An installation above the voltage your state has notified is inspected and approved in writing by the Electrical Inspector before supply starts; one at or below it is self-certified by the owner, with the report submitted to the Electrical Inspector (regulation 45). The distribution company either tests the installation or accepts test results signed by the licensed electrical contractor (regulation 33). The contractor produces the results and forms; the owner signs what is the owner's to sign.
• Commissioning and integrated test reports — the fire alarm's cause-and-effect with dampers, fans and AHU shutdowns; mains, DG and UPS changeover; plant run at design duty — with calibration certificates for the instruments used.

For what an electrical commissioning file should hold, test by test, see what to check during electrical testing and commissioning.

3. Asset register and warranties

The asset register is the list your maintenance team, or your next AMC contractor, works from. Ask for it as a spreadsheet in the format your maintenance team uses, one row per asset:

• Tag number and location, matching the as-built drawings
• System, make, model and serial number
• Rating with its unit — kVA for a transformer, kW for a motor, TR for a chiller, flow and head for a pump
• Supplier, date of supply and date of commissioning
• Warranty start, end and conditions, including any condition that servicing be done by the manufacturer or its authorised agent
• Commissioning test values — the baseline every later reading is compared with
• Recommended spares, with part numbers

Warranty certificates should be in the owner's name, not the contractor's. The defect-liability schedule — when it starts, when it ends, how a defect is reported and what the contractor must then do — belongs with the register; defect-liability disputes usually begin where that schedule was vague.

4. As-built drawings and O&M deliverables

• As-built drawings for every discipline — routes, sizes, levels and positions as installed, marked as built, dated and signed, in editable format as well as PDF. Not the tender drawings with a new stamp.
• Operation and maintenance manuals — a description of each system, its operating and shutdown procedures, the maintenance schedule from the manufacturers' manuals, data sheets and spares lists.
• Training records — who was trained, on what, and by whom.
• The approvals file — each approval, inspection report or self-certification, with its conditions and its renewal or re-inspection date written down.
• The start of the records you must keep. For installations above 650 V, the CEA regulations require records of all tests, trippings, maintenance work and repairs to be kept so they can be compared with past records (regulation 48(6)), and, in the regulation on earthing for apparatus above 650 V, every earthing system to be tested for earth resistance on a dry day at least once a year, with the records kept (regulation 50(8)). The handover file is where those records begin.

What goes wrong when this set is missing is covered separately.

When a document is missing: the decision table

Tie each document to the payment that should wait for it. Late paperwork is a cost the owner carries for the life of the building, so the contract should make it the contractor's cost first.

Writing it into the contract

List the deliverables with due dates and formats, and make each stage payment depend on that stage's records. A contractor who produces these as routine will not object; the objection is itself information.

The turnkey EPC page lists what the client receives at each of its fourteen stages, and testing and commissioning is the service that produces most of the records above. The project estimator lays out the phases these documents belong to; the tender BOQ checklist is the companion page for a tender, and more planning guides are on the Insights page. For a document list fitted to your project, share the project layout and equipment schedule for a scope and BOQ review.

Sources and how to verify

• Central Electricity Authority (Measures relating to Safety and Electric Supply) Regulations, 2023 — Central Electricity Authority, notified 8 June 2023. Regulations 31 (licensed electrical contractors), 33 (testing of a consumer's installation), 45 (Electrical Inspector's approval and self-certification), 48 (testing, operation and maintenance above 650 V) and 50(8) (annual earth-resistance tests), as cited above. CEA's regulations page also lists an amendment notified in 2026; check it, and any later one, before relying on a provision.
• National Building Code of India 2016 (SP 7:2016) — Bureau of Indian Standards. The model code for fire and life safety (Part 4), building services (Part 8) and plumbing services (Part 9) that design bases commonly cite; how it is adopted varies by authority.

Confirm locally: the voltage your state has notified for self-certification, whether your state's Electrical Inspectorate approves drawings before work starts, and which documents your fire authority asks for at inspection and at renewal.