Tag colours generate more confident misinformation than any other part of this subject. People will tell you the colour is legally mandated, that a wrong colour is a breach, or that a site can be shut down over it.
None of that is right, and the confusion has a specific cause.
Where the colours come from
Two different standards are being conflated.
AS/NZS 3760 covers in-service inspection and testing of electrical equipment in general workplaces. It sets out what information a tag must carry. It does not require any particular colour.
AS/NZS 3012 covers electrical installations on construction and demolition sites. This is where the quarterly colour rotation lives, and it exists for a practical reason: on a site where equipment is tested every three months and dozens of subcontractors come and go, a supervisor needs to see at fifty paces whether a lead belongs to this quarter or last.
The colours solve a construction-site problem. They then leaked outwards into general workplaces because the tags were already being printed, and because plenty of providers found it easier to run one system than two.
The three-monthly rhythm the colours track is itself a construction interval, not a general one — see how often you should test and tag for what applies elsewhere.
The Electricity (Safety) Amendment Regulations 2025, in force from 13 November 2025, cite AS/NZS 3012:2019 including Amendment 1 for the periodic assessment of low voltage installations on construction and demolition sites. If your last site pack referenced the 2010 edition, it is out of date.
The quarterly rotation
The rotation used on New Zealand construction sites runs on the calendar quarters:
| Quarter | Months | Colour |
|---|---|---|
| Summer | December – February | Red |
| Autumn | March – May | Green |
| Winter | June – August | Blue |
| Spring | September – November | Yellow |
An item tested in July carries the winter colour and is due again in October, when the spring colour is being applied.
Confirm the rotation with the principal contractor before you mobilise. The colour sequence is a convention, and what governs access to a particular site is that site's rules. Some principal contractors specify their own scheme, some run a separate colour for equipment they own, and some require a site-specific tag on top of the standard one. Ask. It costs a phone call and saves a truck being turned around at the gate.
Why colours are not the point
Here is the failure mode we see repeatedly, and it is worth understanding because it is the reason we are lukewarm about colour systems generally.
A supervisor walks the site, sees the right colour, and moves on. But the colour only tells you which three-month window an item was tested in. An item tested on 1 June and an item tested on 31 August both carry the winter tag. One of them is nearly three months closer to its next test than the other. On a site running three-monthly intervals, that is the difference between in date and a fortnight overdue.
The colour is a screening tool. It is not evidence.
The date is evidence. And the record behind the date is the actual evidence, because a tag can be applied by anyone with a printer.
If you take one thing from this page: train your people to read the next-test date, not the colour. It takes two seconds longer and it is the difference between a system that works and a system that looks like it works.
What must actually be on a tag
Under AS/NZS 3760, the tag needs to carry enough information for someone to know the item's status and to trace it back to a record. In practice that means:
- The name of the person or company that carried out the test
- The date the item was tested
- The date the next test is due
- An indication that the item passed
We add an item identifier that ties the tag to a line in the register. That is not required by the standard, but without it a tag is an assertion floating free of any record. With it, anyone can ask a question about that specific item and get an answer in seconds.
AS/NZS 3760 and AS/NZS 3012 are copyrighted documents sold by Standards New Zealand. This page summarises and explains them; it does not reproduce them. If you are running a programme in-house, buy the current editions.
Do you need coloured tags in an office?
No.
There is no requirement, and for most offices the rotation actively does not help — items on a twelve-month cycle only change colour once a year, so the colour tells you almost nothing.
Where colour genuinely earns its place in a general workplace is when you use it for something other than the quarter. We have seen businesses colour by interval, so a glance tells you whether an item is on the six-month or twelve-month cycle. Others colour by department where equipment migrates between areas. Both are more useful than a quarterly rotation on annual testing.
The exceptions where you should expect to use the construction rotation:
- You work on construction or demolition sites
- Your equipment goes onto other people's construction sites
- A client contract or prequalification system specifies it
- You hire equipment out to contractors
Out-of-service and other tags
Separate from the pass tag, you will see two others in use, and it is worth knowing the difference because they do different jobs.
A fail or out-of-service tag is attached to an item that has failed testing and must not be used. It stays with the item until it is repaired and re-tested, or disposed of. The essential part is not the tag — it is that the item physically leaves circulation. A tagged-out appliance left in the corner of the workshop will be used within a week by somebody in a hurry. The full process is in what happens when an appliance fails.
A danger or lockout tag is a different thing entirely. That belongs to isolation procedures for maintenance work, not to in-service testing, and it should never be confused with a failed-appliance tag.
If your site uses both, make sure the two look nothing like each other.
The reason we spend a page on this is that tag colour is the part of compliance people can see, so it becomes the part they manage. Meanwhile the register — the part that would actually answer a question from WorkSafe, an insurer or a lawyer — is the part nobody checks.
Colour is the shop window. Ask to see the stockroom.