A customer's annual generator compliance file, assembled from your service records for your service manager.

A commercial customer's generator year leaves paper in several places: weekly inspection sheets, monthly exercise logs, a load bank or annual exercise report, fuel samples at a lab, transfer switch test sheets, repair tickets and notes on anything found wrong. Your service manager turns that into one file for each site and generator, and sends it to the customer.

For the test, AI reads the same records and drafts the annual file: what was done, on which date, by whom and which document shows it, followed by the dates and records still missing. It judges no test result, changes no record, signs nothing and sends nothing. Your service manager reviews the file and decides what goes out.

A single year runs on several clocks. Minnesota's Department of Health, in guidance revised in June 2024, has health care facilities inspect generators weekly, exercise them under load at least monthly and, under NFPA 99, test them 12 times a year at intervals of 20 to 40 days. Transfer switches are operated monthly. Main and feed breakers on Level 1 systems are exercised annually, and those above 600 volts every six months, with a simulated overload test every two years. A Level 1 system also gets a test within every 36 months, continuous for the generator's assigned class but not required past four hours. The draft places each record on that calendar, generator by generator, and names any interval it can't show.

The monthly line is a form, not a checkmark. Minnesota's list covers the generator's identity, install date, standby nameplate kW, fuel type, test date and initials, the transfer switch used to start the test and its transfer time, cooldown, elapsed run time backed by hour meter start and stop readings, oil pressure, operating temperature, the kW under test, and any problem with its fix and the parts replaced. Warm-up and cool-down don't count toward the minimum run. Kansas's State Fire Marshal prints an operating log that adds jacket water temperature, battery amperes, volts and amps on each phase, frequency and restoration of service in seconds, and says a site short of the minimum load has to document everything connected to the generator and the total load carried. The draft fills each field from the log, notes any field left blank, and doesn't interpret a reading.

A load bank report has to say which test it was. Kansas describes the annual diesel load bank run as two hours in three steps, conducted by a generator contractor, and its reference line points to NFPA 110's 2005 edition. Minnesota, citing the 2010 edition, states a supplemental annual run of one and a half continuous hours. A 2022 article in Health Facilities Management notes the standard is referenced by CMS K-tag K918 and Joint Commission Standard EC.02.05.07, and says a combined annual load bank and 36-month test should be labeled as combined and cite NFPA 110-2010, Section 8.4.9.7. So the draft records the edition, the steps and the load values as the report shows them, and leaves the limit in the document that sets it. Whether the test met it is your service manager's call and the customer's.

Fuel and air records answer to other people. The Accreditation Commission for Health Care's 2023 checklist says a fuel quality test must happen at least annually, using tests approved under ASTM D 975, and a federal survey from June 2023, posted by Indiana's health department, cited one site for no annual fuel quality test on three diesel generators and for no documented 36-month test on two. EPA's rules want hours from a non-resettable meter split between emergency and other running (40 CFR 63.6655(f)), the time and reason of each run (60.4214(b)), and maintenance checks and readiness testing kept to a maximum of 100 hours per calendar year (63.6640(f)). For an existing emergency diesel at an area source, meaning construction began before June 12, 2006, Table 2d of Subpart ZZZZ sets oil and filter and hose and belt checks every 500 hours or within a year and 30 days, and the air cleaner every 1,000 hours. A 2007 New Jersey advisory has logs for generators above 37 kW show each test run's reason and operator, and bars routine testing when poor air quality is predicted. The draft sets out hours, runs and service dates for your reviewer and doesn't decide which rule applies.

How long a file lives depends on who is asking, and your reviewer watches the rest. Minnesota recommends keeping logs at least three years. Virginia's emergency generator general permit wants records current for the most recent five years, covering rolling 12-month hours, fuel supplier certifications, each unit's make, model, serial number and model year, and maintenance, testing and training. Texas tells small water systems to keep completed checklists for the life of the generator. Your reviewer checks that every record lands on the right site, generator and date, that each gap is named, that load values are copied and never rounded, that a report's edition and steps are shown, and that no line says a test passed. Rules differ by site and jurisdiction, and nothing here is legal, regulatory or engineering advice.

After your reviewer's yes, the next annual files that come due get the same drafting for about 30 days.

Your service manager reviews every file and sends it, and anything still missing goes to your service desk to find. The side-by-side comparison keeps running on live files, and anything further is a new decision with its own price.