Most Facilities Management electrical SLAs are written for cleaning, not voltage. “Prompt response” is the phrase that survives every procurement cycle, and it’s the phrase that falls over at 2am when the half-floor of a tenanted asset has lost a phase. If you’re scoping or renewing an electrical contract for a managed portfolio, here’s what should actually be in the document.
The four time-bands that matter
“Prompt” is a service-credit dispute waiting to happen. Specify time bands by incident severity:
- Immediate (≤60 min on-site): Life-safety, total loss of supply, fire-alarm fault, lift entrapment with power dependency.
- 4-hour: Loss of supply to a critical tenant zone (server room, refrigeration, healthcare).
- 24-hour: Non-critical partial outage, recurring trip, minor RCD fault.
- 72-hour (next-working-day standard): Planned remedial, lighting fault in non-critical area, EICR observation rectification.
Tie each band to a service credit. The credit doesn’t need to be punitive — it needs to be specific.
What an on-call rota actually looks like
The biggest gap between SLA wording and SLA reality is the on-call rota. Ask for it in writing:
- Named engineers per shift block, not “the duty team”.
- Geographic coverage map — which engineers cover which postcodes, and what the maximum drive time is at 3am.
- Escalation tree — what happens if the primary on-call doesn’t answer within 10 minutes.
- Holiday cover protocol — Christmas Eve at 11pm is the test, not a Tuesday in March.
If the contractor’s answer is a call-handler who emails the engineer in the morning, you don’t have an emergency electrical SLA — you have an answering service.
Documentation deliverables per call-out
Every attended incident should produce a packet, not a phone summary:
- Time-stamped attendance log (request received / on-site / works complete).
- Make-safe certificate where any C1 was isolated.
- Minor Works Certificate (MWC) or EIC where new work was carried out.
- Photo evidence of the fault and the rectification.
- Remedials log with target date for any deferred work.
This is the file your insurer wants in front of them if a claim ever lands. “We attended and resolved” doesn’t survive a loss adjuster’s first read.
PPM cadence that fits the 5-yearly EICR cycle
Reactive call-outs are the obvious part of an FM electrical contract. The PPM cadence is the part that quietly compounds:
- Annual: Emergency lighting test, RCD trip test, fire-alarm electrical compliance.
- Annual or quarterly: Thermographic survey on main distribution boards in high-load assets.
- 5-yearly: Full EICR per dwelling / commercial unit, building-wide where appropriate.
- Event-driven: Pre- and post-tenant-fit-out inspection, change-of-tenant supply review.
The PPM schedule should land in your contractor’s calendar 90 days before each visit, not 7. Slipping a PPM tells the auditor the contract isn’t being managed.
What to do next
If you’re refreshing the electrical SLA for a Leeds-area managed portfolio, JP Electrical & EV Solutions provides a contract template that maps the four time-bands, the on-call rota and the PPM cadence into one document. We’re NICEIC-approved, Part P compliant, available 24/7 across LS, WF and HG postcodes with a Leeds-based team and a genuine on-call rota.
Request a free, no-obligation SLA review via our commercial property electrical services page, or read more about our 24/7 emergency electrician service in Leeds.
FAQ
What’s a reasonable response time to expect from an FM electrical contractor in Leeds?
For genuine life-safety incidents, ≤60 minutes on-site is the standard for an on-call rota covering the LS postcodes. 4-hour is realistic for critical-but-not-immediate. Anything quoted as “same-day” without a band is a flag.
Should an electrical SLA include a service credit clause?
Yes — service credits make response times enforceable. They don’t need to be large; they need to be specific and tied to evidenced response time, not customer complaint.
Can one contractor handle reactive call-outs and the 5-yearly EICR programme?
They should, and the documentation is cleaner when they do. Splitting reactive and PPM across two contractors fragments the evidence pack and creates a finger-pointing risk on remedials.