What Do the Coloured Test Tags Mean?

The colour of a test tag tells you which testing period an item was done in — it’s a quick visual way to spot gear that’s current versus overdue at a glance. On construction sites the colours rotate on a set cycle so a supervisor (or a safety inspector) can walk through and instantly see what’s been tested this period and what’s lapsed.

Here’s the simple version.

The colour is a scheduling tool

Rather than squinting at the date on every single tag, the colour lets anyone see at a glance whether a piece of equipment is up to date. If this quarter’s colour is, say, green and you spot a red tag from two periods ago, you know that item’s overdue without reading a thing. On a big site with hundreds of items, that’s a huge time-saver.

Where the colours are a strict rotation

On construction and demolition sites, equipment is tested every 3 months, and the tag colour rotates each period on a defined cycle. This is tied to the tighter rules those sites work under (AS/NZS 3012). It’s the clearest example of the colour system doing real work — instant visual proof of what’s current.

In other workplaces

Away from construction, the colours are more of a handy convention than a hard legal rule. Plenty of providers still use a colour system to make scheduling easy, but the thing that actually matters everywhere is what’s recorded on the tag and in your register — not the colour itself.

What’s actually on the tag

Regardless of colour, a compliant tag records the important stuff:

• Who tested it (the competent person or company)
• The date it was tested
• The date it’s next due
• That it passed

That information — backed by your asset register — is what proves compliance if you’re ever audited or need to make an insurance claim. Every test & tag job we do includes both, done by a competent person — not just someone with a roll of tags.

Don’t rely on the colour alone

A colour tells you roughly where an item sits in the cycle; it doesn’t tell you the item is genuinely safe or that the testing was done properly with calibrated gear. The colour is the quick glance — the record and the competent person behind it are what count.