UL panel inspections ?

Good Afternoon ,

I have a project coming up that involves building control panels. It has been a number of years since I had to get panels field inspected by UL. How do they charge to come on site to inspect our panels that we are going to build at our facility ? Do they charge by the size ? By the number of components ? I believe they have Mid Atlantic office , correct.

Thanks so much in advance.

I had one inspected in North Dakota about 3 years ago and it was about $4,000. That was a field evaluation so there was travel expenses on top of the inspection fee.

I think if the UL inspector is local and they come to your shop it will cost much less.

As far as the fee I am not sure how they do it for a non-508A panel shop. We are a 508A shop so they charge me a fee for every certification I have per inspection.

Last time I did it 20 some odd years ago, as a NON-UL 508A shop at the time, it was $16K plus all travel expenses to label one panel, portal to portal for a total of about $20K. The size of the panels were insignificant, it's all about the time in the field and the cost to get there. But be prepared to re-build things on the spot immediately, and have ALL of your documentation at your finger tips, because if they reject some component or aspect of your work and leave, you pay for travel AGAIN for them to come back. So it's usually best to change it immediately, even if you have to pay for them to spend another night in a hotel or something.The next time I needed listing, I just paid to get my shop listed under UL508A, it actually cost me less (but took longer).

Their main East Coast facility is/was in RTP (Research Triangle Park) in South Carolina. There might be other facilities by now though.

I wonder how much is involved in getting one of our employees UL trained to do our own panel inspections ?

You should call UL to get the current procedure.

As I recal (it has been a while) We had to send at least one person to the class on UL508A (so far we have sent 5 people total but we are very close to UL's headquarters so there is no travel expense for us to do this).

Then we had to build a panel as a first go around and they sent someone in to inspect it kind of like a test. I can't remember if they had to come back for the 2nd panel or not.

While we do in the mid 100's of panels a year probably only 100/year get certified. We get inspected on a quarterly basis (un announced) and the inspector can look at anything pertaining to the panels we are certifyling.

I'm sure there was some initial fee to set up the panel. We also pay a yearly fee to maintain our file at UL (for instance our file number is E312540. You can even look it up at UL in the Online Certifications Directory and we are there ),

Lastly we have to pay for the quarterly inspections. While we haven't had any panels fail inspection, you have to pay if the inspector "dings" a panel on your floor. Oh, and you have to purchase labels but that is a relatively small charge. The shipping is usually more than the cost of the labels. But, they do expire after about 3 years because they figure the adhesive ages so you can't just buy 1000's of labels as a lifetime supply.

But again, call UL. They can give you exact amounts and procedures.

Rob S. said:

I wonder how much is involved in getting one of our employees UL trained to do our own panel inspections ?

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I can't see UL allowing this. Training people is one thing, but actually getting them to enforce the rules correctly is another. No way they'll allow a panel shop to certify their own panels using UL certification without an independent party at least looking at it first. That's a massive conflict of interest.

Keep in mind you don't specifically need UL to provide inspection and certification to UL standards. Any of the Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories (of which there are seven, I think) that are willing to do the inspection will suffice. I know for sure that TUV does inspections on site. You might want to shop around a little bit.

That being said, I can't see this happening for less than $10,000.

Keith

Or you could hire a UL508 shop to build the panel. Probably a lot less than having UL come in to inspect. Some places charge a nominal fee for the certification. We just consider it a cost of doing business and do it on request but don't charge extra. We do generally like to use the components we represent as a distributor since we know how to apply them to code and we get better pricing on them so our customer get a better price.

I agree with Norm. Have a UL508A shop build this one for you. the total cost will be lower.

Keith

We have a UL inspector in the area, so it's usually around $3000 for the "service" here.

If that cost factors in the cost of the variance report and it is an "off the street" inspection (not at a UL panel builder), you have a pretty good deal going there, Rube.

Keith