{"id":235890,"date":"2026-09-01T09:00:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T07:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rister.ch\/?p=235890"},"modified":"2026-08-31T15:42:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T13:42:51","slug":"electrical-company-geneva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rister.ch\/en\/post\/electrical-company-geneva\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting up an electrical company in Geneva: ESTI licence, SIG and payroll"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The licence is federal, the daily grind is Geneva. To set up an electrical company here, the installation licence comes from the Federal Inspectorate for Heavy Current Installations (ESTI) and is valid throughout Switzerland. Everything that follows is local: work notifications run through SIG, payroll falls under Geneva’s own building-trades collective agreement and the cantonal minimum wage, and a French or EU electrician’s diploma needs recognition before the first lease is signed. Here is the procedure, seen from Geneva.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Contents<\/h3>\n
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  1. The federal base: one ESTI licence, valid everywhere<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. The qualified person and foreign diplomas<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Incorporating the company in Geneva<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Applying to ESTI from French-speaking Switzerland<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. The SIG circuit, project after project<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Geneva payroll: cantonal CBA and minimum wage<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Foreign firms: the 90-day route and its limits<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. The pitfalls we see in practice<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n

    The federal base: one ESTI licence, valid everywhere<\/h2>\n

    The Ordinance on Low-Voltage Electrical Installations (OIBT) reserves installation work for holders of an installation licence granted by ESTI. The rule covers installing, modifying and maintaining installations, and permanently connecting fixed equipment. There is no separate Geneva permit: the canton adds no counter of its own, the Confederation runs the only one that matters.<\/p>\n

    The licence has three properties that change the economics compared with other regulated trades. It is unlimited in time, with no periodic renewal. It is valid across Switzerland, so a Geneva company can follow its clients to Nyon, Lausanne or Fribourg without any new procedure. And it sits in a public register that grid operators consult at every work notification: without it, no site starts lawfully anywhere. Its fragility fits in one line of the ordinance: the licence ceases to be valid if the technical manager leaves the company.<\/p>\n

    The qualified person and foreign diplomas<\/h2>\n

    A company obtains the licence only if it employs a “qualified person” as technical manager: the holder of the advanced federal diploma as an expert in electrical installation and safety, or someone who combines three years of supervised installation practice, a passed practical examination and one of the diplomas listed in article 8 OIBT, such as the Swiss electrician certificate plus an applied sciences degree in electrical engineering.<\/p>\n

    In the Geneva area, the foreign diploma question comes up in every second file. ESTI itself rules on the equivalence of qualifications earned abroad, a French professional title for instance, applying the vocational training legislation by analogy. The recognition procedure is billed on actual workload and takes weeks: it belongs before incorporation, not after, otherwise the structure exists but cannot install anything.<\/p>\n

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    RISTER recommendation<\/h4>\n

    The technical manager can be employed part-time, but the ordinance sets a floor of 40 % occupation, a workload consistent with that rate, and at most two companies. Arrangements where one diploma holder “covers” several firms from another canton pass neither ESTI’s checks nor the grid operators’. Recruit this profile first, with a long notice period.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Incorporating the company in Geneva<\/h2>\n

    The ordinance imposes no legal form. An electrician going independent who is personally qualified can hold the licence as an individual. With employees and parallel sites, the S\u00e0rl at CHF 20,000 of capital becomes the standard form, the SA at CHF 100,000 suiting more capitalised structures. The corporate purpose must expressly cover electrical installation work, since the licence is granted for that activity, and professional liability insurance, which the ordinance does not require, must be in place before the first project: Geneva property managers and general contractors demand it contractually.<\/p>\n

    Our incorporation service<\/a> handles the notary, the commercial register and the social insurance registrations, sequenced around the licence file.<\/p>\n

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    Formation and licence<\/p>\n

    The company is built around the ESTI file, not the other way round<\/p>\n

    Corporate purpose, the technical manager’s employment, the recognition timeline for a foreign diploma, Geneva social registrations: the order of operations decides the date of your first invoice. RISTER\u00ae incorporates your company while preparing the licence file that follows.<\/p>\n

    Request a first exchange<\/a>
    \n A corporate services provider established in Geneva, 25 years of experience.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

    Applying to ESTI from French-speaking Switzerland<\/h2>\n

    ESTI is headquartered in Fehraltorf, but French-speaking files run through its branch in Bulle, Route de la P\u00e2la 100, and the application is filed online. The licence names the holder, the technical manager and their level of employment, and the people entitled to sign notifications to grid operators.<\/p>\n

    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
    Service<\/th>\nFee<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
    General installation licence (company or individual)<\/td>\nBased on workload, minimum CHF 460<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Temporary licence after the technical manager leaves<\/td>\nCHF 460, extension CHF 305<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Examination for a limited licence (in-house or special installations)<\/td>\nCHF 985<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Examination for the connection licence<\/td>\nCHF 365<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Recognition of a foreign electrical qualification<\/td>\nBased on actual workload<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

    Source: ESTI fee schedule under the OIBT, version of 3 December 2025.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Once granted, two standing duties: report to ESTI within two weeks any fact requiring a change to the licence, a new technical manager above all, and keep the team’s training at the state of the art, the NIBT 2025 standard in force since 1 January 2025 being the benchmark. If the technical manager leaves without a successor, the company can obtain a temporary licence for six months, extendable once, under reinforced supervision at its own cost.<\/p>\n

    The SIG circuit, project after project<\/h2>\n

    In Geneva the low-voltage grid operator is SIG, and that is who the installer deals with daily, on the rhythm set by the ordinance and the Swiss distributors’ requirements PDIE-CH, which SIG applies.<\/p>\n

    Before the work, the installation notice: every new installation and every significant modification, notably beyond a 3.6 kVA power increase, must be notified to SIG before starting. During the work, an initial verification runs alongside construction. At handover, the in-house final inspection by the qualified person or an authorised inspector produces the safety report handed to the owner, and completion is notified to SIG with that report. For installations whose inspection period is under 20 years, commercial premises, restaurants, workshops, an acceptance inspection by an independent body follows within six months: whoever installed may not inspect their own work. The periods of the ordinance’s annex then govern the installation’s life: 20 years for housing, 10 for offices, 5 for industrial premises and venues open to the public, 1 year for construction sites. For a young company, those periodic inspections are a recurring market of their own, accessible with the separate inspection licence.<\/p>\n

    Geneva payroll: cantonal CBA and minimum wage<\/h2>\n

    This is the least-known Geneva particularity of the trade: the national collective agreement of the Swiss electrical branch, 2026-2029 version, does not apply in Geneva. The canton, like Valais, has its own agreement. Since 1 July 2026, employment relationships fall under the Geneva collective agreement for the building trades sector covering heating, electricity, sheet metal and metalwork, concluded notably between EIT Gen\u00e8ve on the employers’ side and Unia for the union, and declared binding in the canton until 31 December 2029. Every Geneva electrical installation company is subject to it, member of the signatory associations or not, and its class-by-class pay scales should be checked on the text published by the cantonal labour inspection office before any hire.<\/p>\n

    On top of it sits the cantonal legal floor: Geneva’s minimum wage, CHF 24.59 per hour in 2026, applies to every employer in the canton. Between the binding agreement, the cantonal minimum, surcharges and site-by-site time tracking, payroll needs discipline from the first fitter: that is the core of our general administration service in Geneva<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Foreign firms: the 90-day route and its limits<\/h2>\n

    Many Geneva files start across the border. An electrical business established in France or elsewhere in the EU can work in Switzerland up to 90 days per calendar year under free movement, subject to the prior notification and, electrical installation being a regulated trade, the qualification check that goes with it. The route is made for testing the market, not settling in it: beyond the 90 days, or as soon as you need to answer local tenders, hire on the spot and file SIG notifications in your own name, the Swiss structure becomes unavoidable. For workforce posted to Swiss sites in the meantime, our secondment management service<\/a> covers the notification and wage-compliance duties.<\/p>\n

    For the cross-border owner, the vigilance point is double: have your own qualification recognised by ESTI to hold the qualified person role yourself, or recruit a technical manager in Switzerland, and plan for the fact that the installation licence is granted to the Swiss entity, not transferred from the foreign one.<\/p>\n

    The pitfalls we see in practice<\/h2>\n

    Losing the technical manager without a succession plan remains the trade’s first casualty: the licence ceases to be valid, the temporary licence window lasts six months extendable once, and the market for qualified profiles in French-speaking Switzerland is narrow. The second is the arrangement of convenience, a diploma holder on paper without the 40 % minimum or effective supervision: the ordinance makes it a criminal offence to notify work carried out by people not integrated into the organisation, and revocations are published. A resident director mandate never replaces the qualified person; we decline files built on that confusion.<\/p>\n

    Then come the procedural traps: starting a site before the SIG installation notice, skipping the independent acceptance inspection within six months on commercial premises, or calibrating wages on the national agreement when the Geneva CBA and the cantonal minimum apply. As with setting up a security company in Geneva<\/a>, compliance in this trade is not a file you close: it is a circuit that repeats on every project.<\/p>\n

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    FAQ: setting up an electrical company in Geneva<\/h2>\n
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    Do I need a Geneva permit to open an electrical company?<\/h3>\n

    No, there is no cantonal permit: the regime is federal. The general installation licence is requested from ESTI, the Federal Inspectorate for Heavy Current Installations, whose French-speaking branch is in Bulle. It is unlimited in time, valid across Switzerland and listed in a public register that SIG checks at every work notification.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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    Is a French or EU electrician’s diploma recognised in Switzerland?<\/h3>\n

    It can be, but recognition is not automatic. ESTI itself rules on the equivalence of foreign qualifications for the qualified person role, applying the vocational training legislation by analogy. The procedure is billed on actual workload and should be launched before the company is formed, because without a recognised qualified person the company cannot obtain the installation licence.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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    What wages apply to electricians in Geneva?<\/h3>\n

    Geneva is excluded from the national collective agreement of the branch. Since 1 July 2026, the Geneva building-trades collective agreement covering heating, electricity, sheet metal and metalwork applies, declared binding in the canton, with the cantonal minimum wage of CHF 24.59 per hour in 2026 as the absolute floor. Check the agreement’s pay scales on the official text before hiring.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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    How do work notifications to SIG operate?<\/h3>\n

    Before every new installation or significant modification, notably beyond a 3.6 kVA power increase, the installer files an installation notice with SIG under the PDIE-CH requirements. At completion, the safety report from the final inspection goes to the owner and completion is notified to SIG. Installations with an inspection period under 20 years additionally get an acceptance inspection by an independent body within six months.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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    Can my foreign electrical firm work in Geneva without a Swiss company?<\/h3>\n

    Yes, up to 90 days per calendar year under free movement, with the prior notification and the qualification check applying to regulated trades. Beyond that, or once the activity becomes regular, a Swiss entity is the workable route: the ESTI licence is granted to the Swiss company, hiring falls under the Geneva agreement, and SIG notifications are filed in its name.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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    What happens if my technical manager resigns?<\/h3>\n

    The licence ceases to be valid from their departure, because it is tied to their person. The change must be reported to ESTI within two weeks, and the company can obtain a temporary licence for six months, extendable by six more at most, while it recruits a new qualified person. During that period ESTI supervises the work specially, at the company’s expense.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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    Sources<\/h2>\n