5 signs it’s time to rethink your relay protection testing workflow

If you work in substation commissioning or relay protection testing, the chances are you’ve adapted your routine to make things work. 

But if these five signs sound familiar, it might be time to rethink whether your workflow is helping you – or holding you back.

1. Your setup process feels like reinventing the wheel every time

Do you find yourself:

• Rebuilding test plans from scratch?              
• Copy-pasting from old spreadsheets?
• Manually entering settings over and over?

If so, you’re not alone – but you are losing time. 

Engineers can spend up to 45 minutes just on test setup for routine overcurrent relay tests that should be standardized across their fleet.

If you’re testing 20 relays a month and spending an extra 30 minutes per relay on setup, that’s 10 hours of lost productivity – more than a full workday.

A streamlined workflow uses reusable templates that:

• Apply standard settings across relays
• Save and load configurations instantly
• Work across IED models and vendor

Tip: Even starting with a basic test template for your most common scenarios can save you hours each week.

2. You’re still taking screenshots and notes to build reports

Manual reporting isn’t just slow – it’s also risky. Forget one screen capture and your test documentation may fall short of audit standards. 

You’re working harder than you need to if your current process include:

• Annotated screenshots
• Handwritten test notes
• Manually compiled PDFs

Engineers caught in the documentation trap spend as much time creating reports as they do performing tests. Worse, manual documentation introduces errors that can surface months later during audits.

Look to introduce tools that generate reports as you go, capturing:

• Test conditions
• As-left settings
• Pass/fail status
• Waveform evidence (if needed)
• Timestamps for audit compliance

It’s not about automation for its own sake. It’s about saving time and reducing risk.

3. Test results live in too many places

You finished the test. Now where’s the data?

• Some results are in your laptop
• Others are emailed from a colleague
• Settings are on a USB stick
• Waveforms are saved to a different folder

How many times have you spent 20 minutes looking for a test result you know you saved somewhere? 

Or had to repeat a test because you couldn’t find the original data? 

Scattered storage makes it hard to:

• Find historical test records
• Share data with your team
• Prove compliance during audits
• Identify trends across similar equipment

Compliance risk: Auditors increasingly expect organized, accessible documentation. Scattered files don’t just waste time – they can lead to compliance failures.

A modern workflow brings everything together:

• Unified test records
• Easily exported reports
• Clear audit trails
• Searchable test history

The less time you spend tracking down files, the more time you spend doing actual testing.

4. You’re relying on one or two team members to ‘make it work’

When only one engineer knows how to run the test software or create reports, your workflow isn’t just inefficient – it’s fragile. What happens when your go-to person is on holiday, sick or changes jobs? Suddenly, the knowledge bottleneck means routine tests become emergencies.

New engineers shouldn’t need weeks to learn your testing process. If the training burden sounds familiar, your workflow is too complex.

Signs of workflow fragility:

• Only certain people can generate reports
• Test procedures exist only in someone’s head
• Equipment configurations aren’t documented
• New team members need extensive hand-holding

Good workflows:

• Are easy for any team member to follow
• Include shared templates and guides
• Reduce training time for new engineers
• Create consistent results regardless of who performs the test

If your current setup requires a phone call to ‘the guy who knows how to do it,’ it’s time to standardize.

5. You dread every time you get a new relay or scheme

New relay? New headaches.

• The software looks different
• The settings file is unfamiliar
• The test points are harder to find
• Connection diagrams don’t match your standard cables

The variety problem: modern substations often contain relays from multiple manufacturers, each with different interfaces, file formats and testing requirements. Without standardized approaches, every new device becomes a learning exercise.

Time impact: we’ve seen engineers spend half a day just figuring out how to connect to and configure a new relay type, before they even start testing.

Modern tools and workflows help you:

• Reuse test logic across relay types
• Apply generic templates that adapt to vendor differences
• Build confidence, even when equipment changes
• Maintain consistent documentation regardless of relay brand

Creating vendor-agnostic test procedures that work across your entire relay fleet means spending time testing instead of learning new interfaces. Every test plan you can reuse is one less surprise in the field.

Time to rethink?

These problems don’t mean you’re doing it wrong, but your tools and process may not have kept pace with the demands of the job. 

Each inefficiency might seem small individually, but together they can double or triple your testing time. More importantly, they create stress and increase the risk of errors.

But you don’t need to overhaul everything to get better results. Systems like SMRT and FREJA with RTMS software offer:

• Ready-to-use templates
• Manual and automated testing
• Offline-friendly operation
• Built-in reporting that stays with the job

Even a small improvement – such as standardizing your most frequent test – can save hours and reduce frustration.