NFPA 70B (2023) compliance software: what the records actually require.

What the standard asks you to produce

Strip away the tooling question and NFPA 70B (2023) reduces to a set of records an Electrical Maintenance Program must be able to produce:

• A current equipment inventory, with each asset's location and type
• A one-line diagram of the electrical system
• Written maintenance procedures keyed to each equipment class
• Inspection records with dates, who performed the work, and findings
• Corrective-action tracking for every finding, through resolution
• Training records for every Qualified Person
• Copies of short-circuit, coordination, and arc-flash studies

The linkage requirement

Notice what is not on that list: dashboards, scores, or a certificate. No software can declare a building "done" — the standard describes an ongoing program, and the records are the evidence that it is running.

What makes these records hard is not volume — it is linkage. A useful inspection record connects a specific asset to a specific procedure, performed by a specific Qualified Person on a specific date, with each finding connected to a corrective action and its resolution. Auditors, AHJs, and insurance investigators pull on exactly those threads: this transformer — when was it last serviced, by whom, against what procedure, and what happened to the hot connection the infrared scan found?

If your records cannot answer that chain in one pull, the individual documents do not help much. A binder of scan reports with no asset history and no resolution trail reads as activity, not a program.

Where spreadsheets fall short

Can you run an EMP with spreadsheets? Technically yes; practically no — and the failure modes show up within a few months. Versions fork: the coordinator's copy, the contractor's copy, and the one attached to an email stop agreeing. Attribution disappears: a cell that says "done" does not say who did the work, against which procedure, or what was found. Links rot: the finding lives in one tab, the fix in another workbook, the photo on someone's phone. And nothing surfaces on its own — an overdue interval buried in a long sheet stays invisible until someone goes looking for it.

None of that is a knock on the person maintaining the spreadsheet. It is a structural mismatch: the standard demands relational, dated, attributable records, and flat files cannot hold relationships.

What to look for in software

Whatever you evaluate — EZ70B or anything else — hold it to the records above. Concretely, that means:

• An asset inventory that captures location, type, and nameplate details — and generates the one-line diagram from the same data, so the two never drift apart
• A maintenance procedure library keyed to equipment classes, with references to the standard
• Inspection records that are dated, attributed to a person, and linked to the asset and the procedure
• A findings workflow with severity and a resolution trail — including review of deferred items
• Qualified Person training records with completion and expiration dates
• An engineering-studies tracker that stores the documents and flags refresh triggers
• A one-click export of the whole file — because the moment you need the records is precisely when you do not want to be assembling them

What software cannot do

This list is, transparently, a description of what EZ70B does — and it is also a fair checklist for evaluating anything else. If a tool cannot produce the seven records, linked and dated, it is a scheduling app with an electrical theme.

Be equally clear about the limits. Software does not maintain equipment; qualified people do. It does not perform your studies — those are PE-stamped engineering deliverables. And it cannot make a claim about your standing with an AHJ or an insurer; only your records, reviewed by the people who ask for them, do that. What good software does is narrower and more valuable: it makes the records a byproduct of the work instead of a separate job, so that when someone asks for your program, the answer is an export — not a scramble.

Start with the free records checklist →