Statutory maintenance
Mandatory inspections software: who inspects, what you keep and how far a program goes
Mandatory inspections software is a program that keeps the calendar of the inspections the law dates for the installations in a business's premises and speaks up before they lapse. Some also archive the records and certificates. None carries out the inspection: that falls to an authorised maintenance company or to an inspection body, depending on the installation. The owner is left with two tasks nobody does on their behalf, knowing which day each one is due and being able to show the document when asked. Here are the five most common installations under Spanish rules, who is involved in each and what portion of that work fits in a program.
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What mandatory inspections are
They are the checks a regulation imposes on an installation: at a set frequency, by someone authorised to do them and with a document left afterwards. In the trade in Spain it goes by statutory maintenance, control of mandatory inspections or regulatory maintenance, and all three names mean the same. It stands apart from the maintenance each business decides for itself, such as painting or retiring a machine before it fails, in that here there is no choice: the regulation sets the day.
What affects you depends on what is inside the premises and on their size, more than on the sector. A small bar and a hotel share regulations, but not the same obligations. The list by kind of business is in regulations by sector.
Three parties: owner, maintenance company and inspection body
Almost every regulation divides the task among the same three parties, and mixing them up lies behind most scares:
- The owner. You: whoever owns the premises or operates them. Answerable for the inspections being done and for keeping the documents, even when someone else does the work. Some regulations also leave simple checks to the owner's own staff.
- The maintenance company. An authorised maintenance company is one licensed for that particular installation, which does the periodic maintenance and hands over a record or a certificate. For lifts it is called the lift maintenance company.
- The OCA. The inspection body, known in Spain as an OCA, is an accredited, independent entity that inspects every few years. It neither maintains nor repairs: it checks and grades.
Signing with a maintenance company does not transfer the responsibility to it. If it skips a visit, the one in breach is the owner.
The five most common installations
The frequencies in this table are the general ones in each national regulation, as set out on our regulations pages, where the article and the exceptions appear. Before relying on a row, open its link: the floor area of the premises and the output of the installation change what applies to you, and your regional government may add requirements.
| Installation | Who checks and how often | What the owner keeps | The detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fire protection (extinguishers, hose reels, detection) | Checks every 3 and 6 months, which your own staff may do; authorised maintenance company every year and every 5 years; inspection body every 10 years, with exceptions | The maintenance records, for at least five years | RIPCI |
| Heating, cooling and hot water | Maintenance company from 5 kW, at the regulation's minimum frequencies; above 70 kW, a contract, an annual certificate and an efficiency inspection every 4 years | The log of operations and, where it applies, the annual certificate | RITE |
| Low-voltage electrics | Inspection body every 5 years in the premises the regulation lists (bars, restaurants and hotels are always on it); common areas of housing above 100 kW, every 10. The earthing, one check a year | The certificate from each inspection | Low-voltage inspection |
| Water and legionella | The owner, with trained staff or a specialist company: hot-water temperature daily, disinfection yearly and testing every three months in domestic water | The control plan and its logs, for five years | Legionella |
| Lift | Lift maintenance company every month; inspection body every 2, 4 or 6 years depending on the building | The current contract with the maintenance company, the maintenance log and the inspection certificates | Lift inspection |
A summary of the linked pages, checked against the consolidated text of each Spanish regulation in October 2026. Not legal advice.
Depending on the premises there are more: swimming pools, the HACCP plan of a kitchen, the self-protection plan or the defibrillator where the regional government requires one. To see them together on one sheet, with a column for each date, there is the mandatory inspections calendar.
The owner's work, and where it goes wrong
Seen from inside the business, complying comes down to four actions. None is hard; the trouble is that they come round only a few times a year, and what is infrequent gets forgotten.
- Know which installations there are and their output. Without that, you cannot tell which rows count. It is usually in the fit-out project or in the installation certificates.
- Have a day written down for each inspection. Not «in spring»: the day it lapses. The ten-yearly inspection is the easiest to lose, because whoever noted it no longer works there.
- Book with time to spare. An inspection body does not come overnight. Remembering the inspection in the month it lapses is remembering late.
- Leave the document where someone else can find it. A record sitting in the mailbox of a manager who has left does not turn up on the day it has to be shown.
What fails most is not the maintenance company, which keeps its own diary, but whatever falls between two contracts: the inspection-body visit nobody has commissioned, or the quarterly check the regulation leaves to the premises themselves.
How far a program goes
Tools of very different reach are sold under the same label. It helps to know which one you have in mind:
| Tool | What it does with inspections | What it does not do |
|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheet | One row per inspection, with its day; whoever opens it sees what is lapsing | It does not speak up: it relies on someone remembering to open it |
| Calendar with alarms | Goes off on the set day on the phone of whoever created it | It does not say what it is or who carries it out, and it leaves with that person if they change job |
| Statutory module of a CMMS | Raises an order when due, assigns it and files the record next to the installation | It requires the inventory to be loaded and someone to close each order |
| Compliance platform | Besides the calendar, it tends to follow regulatory changes and cross-check data from many sites | It is a large-company purchase; for a single site it is oversized |
| Reminder on WhatsApp | Sends whoever runs maintenance what is lapsing, with time to book it | It does not file documents or raise orders |
No row carries out the inspection, signs the record or decides which regulation affects you. That is done by the maintenance company, the inspection body and, when in doubt, your engineer or your adviser. A program that claims otherwise is describing a service, not software. How the fullest kind works is in planned maintenance software and in CMMS.
Where Bedel fits, and what it does not do
Bedel is the last row: a reminder. It is not a CMMS and not a compliance platform. The dates come from the sheet you already keep; we load them once, each with what it is, when it lapses and who carries it out. From then on, the person who runs maintenance receives a WhatsApp message each month with the ones coming up, ahead of the due date and with time to ring whoever is needed. What the sheet does not date does not go in: making up a day would be worse than having none.
The reminder sits alongside what Bedel does daily, which is taking in faults. If the maintenance company's visit uncovers something broken, or if between two visits someone sees an extinguisher off its bracket or a lift making a noise, whoever is on the site's list tells the business's WhatsApp. It becomes a numbered ticket, sent to the right technician or company, with the time of the report, of acceptance and of closure in an Excel file. Urgent ones ring the on-call phone; whatever overruns its deadline goes up. It is described in incident management on WhatsApp and, for what breaks, in reactive maintenance software.
What Bedel does not do with mandatory inspections:
- It does not carry out or certify the inspection, and it does not replace the maintenance company or the inspection body.
- It does not store records, reports or certificates: they stay in your folder or your archive.
- It does not decide which regulation affects you or watch for legal changes.
- It holds no inventory of installations and raises no work orders.
- It does not bring the dates of several premises into one view: one site, one account.
- It does not connect to the maintenance company's software or to any other.
If you need the document archive or tracking across many sites, that is a CMMS's job; which ones exist, in best CMMS.
Frequently asked questions
What is mandatory inspections software?
A program that keeps the calendar of the inspections the law imposes on the installations of a business's premises, warns before each due date and, depending on the product, files the records. It does not carry out inspections: maintenance companies and inspection bodies do.
Which mandatory inspections do premises in Spain have?
It depends on their installations. The most common are fire protection, heating and cooling, low voltage, legionella and lifts. What affects you by kind of business is in regulations by sector.
Who carries out mandatory inspections?
Periodic maintenance, a maintenance company authorised for that installation; inspections, an accredited inspection body. Some simple checks, such as the quarterly ones on fire equipment, can be done by the premises' own staff.
What is statutory maintenance?
Another name for the same thing: the set of checks and inspections a regulation requires, with their frequency, who may do them and which document is left. In Spain it is also called regulatory maintenance.
How long must the records be kept?
Each regulation sets it. Fire-protection maintenance records, at least five years, and legionella logs, five years. For the rest, see the page for each installation or ask your maintenance company.
Does Bedel handle mandatory inspections?
It reminds you of them: once a month, on WhatsApp, to whoever runs maintenance, with the dates you have given it. It does not store certificates, does not carry out or certify inspections and does not decide which regulation affects you.
Comparisons
- CMMS: what it is and which one fits your premisesWhat a CMMS is, what a team really needs from maintenance, how corrective and preventive differ, and when WhatsApp is enough and when you need dedicated software.
- Maintenance software: types and how to chooseThe three kinds of maintenance software, six questions to choose yours, what planned and reactive maintenance each need, and the software for each sector.
- Automatic incident handling on WhatsAppWhich part of an incident can be answered and moved on its own over WhatsApp, what a person still does, and how it differs from an auto-reply or a chatbot.
- WhatsApp for hotels: guest customer serviceThe four types of WhatsApp software for a hotel, what each one solves, and why guest service usually fails after the conversation: when what the guest asked for has to be fixed.
- Maintenance software for hotels in Spain, 2026Six criteria built for a hotel, ten products described with what their websites say, and where Bedel fits, which is not one of them.
- Maintenance software for restaurants, 2026Six criteria built for a kitchen, nine products described with what their websites say, and where Bedel fits, which is not one of them.
- Maintenance software for buildings in Spain, 2026Six criteria built for a building, ten products described with what their websites say, from CMMS to block management, and where Bedel fits.
- Incident management software in Spain, 2026Six criteria so you don't buy a help desk when what gets lost is faults, eight products described with their own websites, and where Bedel fits.
- Incident management app in Spain, 2026Eight incident apps described with their own websites, six criteria to choose, and the question almost nobody asks: who has to install it.
- Gym maintenance software in Spain, 2026Six criteria built for a gym, seven products described with what their websites say, from CMMS to membership software, and where Bedel fits.
- Clinic maintenance software in Spain, 2026For clinics and clinic groups, not hospitals: six criteria, seven products described with what their websites say and where Bedel fits.
- Store maintenance software in Spain, 2026For a shop or a store network: six criteria, five products described with what their websites say and where Bedel fits.
- School maintenance software in Spain, 2026For state and private schools: six criteria, seven products described with what their websites say and where Bedel fits.
- Warehouse maintenance software in Spain, 2026For factories, warehouses and logistics sites: what to check, six CMMS summarised from their websites and the gap left by reporting from the workstation.
- Preventive maintenance software: how to chooseWhat a preventive plan holds, the three kinds of recurring task on a site, how a CMMS handles them and how a reminder tool does, and when each is needed.
- Corrective maintenance software: what to ask of itThe journey of an unplanned fault in five moments, what goes wrong at each without software, how urgency, deadline and escalation are set up, and which times are worth measuring.
- Work order management: full order or simple ticketWhat a work order is and where it comes from, what a full system holds, how it differs from a fault ticket and the signs that a business with premises needs one or the other.
- Fault management software: how to choose oneThe path of a fault from whoever reports it to whoever repairs it: the reporting channels and what each one loses, sorting by trade, the outside supplier, the photo and the status sent back.
- Maintenance app: who actually opens itThe four phones a fault passes through, what an app asks of each, why it is dropped where staff turn over, seven demo questions and the no-app alternative.
- Maintenance request software: intake channelsThe six channels a maintenance request comes in through, the four details it needs, who sorts it and how the person who made it gets an answer.
- CMMS with WhatsApp: add-on alert or the way inThe two things sold as a CMMS with WhatsApp (an added notification or the entry point), five questions to tell them apart and who each one suits.
- CMMS for small business: what you need and don'tWhat a small business with premises asks of maintenance, what it can leave out of a full CMMS, a yes-or-no test to see if you need one and five steps to start.
- CMMS software: what it is and who needs all of itWhat CMMS software is, why it is the same thing as a GMAO, what each part is called by country, what it holds and which businesses need all of it or only the report.
- Facility management software: what it coversThe areas of a facility management suite, which ones weigh on a small or mid-size company's facilities team day to day, and the only one Bedel covers.
- Maintenance software for offices: what to checkWhat breaks in an office, whose job each repair is between tenant, landlord and supplier, what to demand of a product and the part Bedel does.
- Residents' association fault reporting softwareFaults in the common areas, who reports them, which trade fixes them, what the managing agent needs to know about each one and the part Bedel covers.
- Maintenance software for coworking spaces: a guideA coworking space's faults seen from the operator's side: who reports them, whose they are, what to ask in a demo, when a CMMS is worth it and Bedel's part.
- Maintenance software for franchises: site by siteMaintenance in a franchise network, with its two owners: what falls to the franchisee, what head office watches, what to ask in a demo and the part Bedel does.
- Maintenance software for sports centres and poolsSports centres, clubs and pools: what fails in the water, the changing rooms and the courts, which checks the rules ask for, when a CMMS suits and what Bedel does.
- Maintenance software for academies: what to askWhat breaks in a language school, a tuition centre or a training centre, who sees it between lessons, when a CMMS is too much and the part Bedel covers.
- Maintenance software for veterinary practicesThe faults of a veterinary practice or hospital: kennels and climate, theatre, autoclave and X-ray, each with its official service; questions for the demo and Bedel's role.
- AI for hotels: what to buy, bookings to repairsA buyer's guide: the four areas of a hotel where AI works today, who decides in each, the questions for the demo and the stretch Bedel covers.
- WhatsApp at work in Spain: group or incident managerWhatsApp groups at work in Spain: what the AEPD has ruled, what the right to disconnect adds and how a group compares with an incident manager for faults on business premises.
- CMMS or Excel for maintaining business premisesWhen a spreadsheet is enough and when a CMMS is needed, how to build the preventive plan in Excel and which records the law says to keep.
- Best CMMS for businesses with premises: criteriaSix criteria built for premises, seven CMMS described with what their websites say, and where Bedel fits, which is not one of them.
Rules by sector
- Restaurants and barsThe obligations of a restaurant or a bar in Spain: what is specific to the kitchen and the checks on the premises, each with the condition that triggers it, how often it applies and its article.
- GymsA gym: no national law; qualifications, insurance and notices under each region's sports professions act, plus low voltage, Legionella, pool, RIPCI and defibrillator as premises.
- HotelsA hotel: guest register and reporting within 24 hours, regional classification, low voltage and lift as a public-assembly venue, RIPCI, Legionella, pool, kitchen and defibrillator.
- Residents' associationsThe obligations of a Spanish residents' association: upkeep, reserve fund, owners' meeting and administrator under the Horizontal Property Act, building logbook, building inspection and the checks on each communal installation.
- Shops and franchisesA shop: responsible declaration up to 750 m², opening hours, prices, franchises with no register since 2018, complaint forms, accessibility adjustments and the inspections of premises open to the public.
- OfficesThe obligations of an office in Spain: temperature and upkeep of the premises, screen work, health and safety, coordination with contractors, internal reporting channel, right to disconnect and building checks.
- SchoolsA school: minimum facilities, protocols against violence and a wellbeing coordinator, canteen and menus from April 2026, self-protection and the building inspections.
- Industrial unitsAn industrial unit: fire inspection every five years under the 2025 regulation, chemical storage (APQ), air receivers, work equipment, low voltage, cooling towers and self-protection.