PNGRB Annexure III: The Weekly Inspection Checklist Every Petrol Pump Must Run

PNGRB Schedule 1, Annexure III prescribes a 15-item weekly safety inspection that every petroleum retail outlet in India must complete and record. The format looks simple on paper, but for a network running 50, 200, or 1,000 outlets it falls apart fast: checks get backdated, photos are missing, sand bucket conditions go unchecked, and TPIA auditors flag the gaps. This article walks through every item in Annexure III, what auditors actually look for, and how a Clappia PNGRB audit checklist app turns the weekly inspection into a five-minute mobile job. Where this fits in the wider stack: see the parent PNGRB checklist guide for the full picture.

Key Takeaways

• Annexure III is mandated under the PNGRB T4S Regulations for petroleum retail outlets and must be carried out weekly by operating personnel (the DSMs) on rotational basis.
• The format has exactly 15 items spanning dispensing units, tank farm, fire equipment, lighting, housekeeping, safety briefings, and electrical condition.
• Most items are Yes/No, but answering honestly without photo evidence is what causes audit findings later.
• The checklist must record date, time, and the inspector's name, and the records must be available for the annual Annexure V audit and any TPIA visit.
• A digital version captures the same 15 items with mandatory photos on "No", GPS, signatures, and an auto-generated PDF that mirrors the regulatory format.

What is PNGRB Annexure III?

Annexure III sits inside Schedule 1 of the PNGRB Technical Standards and Specifications including Safety Standards (T4S) Regulations, which govern every retail outlet dispensing MS, HSD, Auto LPG, CNG, LNG, and LCNG in India. The annexure prescribes the weekly safety inspection checklist that the outlet's own operating personnel must complete.

Three things about it that matter:

• Frequency: weekly. Not monthly, not "when convenient". Every week, every outlet.
• Who runs it: the Dispensing Sales Man (DSM) on the outlet's roster, on a rotational basis so the same person does not run it every time.
• What gets recorded: date, time, the 15-item response sheet, and any unsafe condition observed.

The records feed directly into the annual Annexure V safety audit and are scrutinised during every TPIA visit. A missing week is treated as a non-conformity.

Why does it matter that the weekly inspection is done well?

The weekly check is the first line of defence at a petrol pump. Every higher-frequency PNGRB audit — the annual safety audit (Annexure V), the three-yearly electrical audit (Annexure IV), the TPIA conformity assessment — assumes that the weekly is being run honestly. If it isn't, the deeper audits surface preventable issues at the worst possible moment.

What this looks like in practice:

• A vent pipe wire mesh gets blocked with dust. The weekly check should catch it within seven days. If the check is faked, it festers until the annual audit flags it.
• A fire extinguisher's pressure drops below the safe range. Weekly visual inspection should flag it. If not, it's caught only at the next quarterly check, by which time the extinguisher has been useless for weeks.
• Sand in a fire bucket goes lumpy from monsoon humidity. The weekly check is the only routine that catches this before an actual fire emergency.

Annexure III is short on purpose: 15 items, doable in under ten minutes. The question is not "is it long enough" but "is it actually being done and evidenced".

What are the 15 items in PNGRB Annexure III?

This is the full item list from the regulation, with what auditors look for under each one.

Who at the petrol pump should run Annexure III, and how often?

The regulation says the weekly inspection is to be done by operating personnel (DSMs) on rotational basis. Two things flow from that:

• Rotation matters. If the same DSM runs the check every week, they stop seeing what's actually there. Rotation forces fresh eyes on item 14 (electrical loose connections) and item 4 (vent wire mesh) where complacency is the biggest risk.
• Documented sign-off. The DSM's name must be on the sheet, with date and time. Every digital submission should auto-capture this with a digital signature and a date-time stamp.

Frequency is weekly, but most successful networks run it on a fixed day (e.g., every Wednesday morning before peak hours). Fixed-day cadence makes missed weeks obvious instantly.

What records does the regulation expect you to keep?

The T4S Regulations require the weekly inspection records to be:

• Maintained at the outlet
• Available for the annual Annexure V audit by the company-authorised person
• Producible for any TPIA inspection
• Trended alongside corrective actions to show that recurring issues were addressed

Paper records technically satisfy "maintained". They fail on "available" the moment the sheet is misplaced, and they fail on "trended" because no dealer is going to manually graph 52 weekly sheets.

What fields does a digital Annexure III app need?

If you're moving Annexure III off paper, the form needs to capture every regulatory field and a few that make the data useful afterwards.

Identity and context:

• Outlet code (dropdown from a master list of all outlets in your network)
• Outlet address (auto-pulled from the master)
• Dealer name (auto-pulled)
• Inspector (DSM) name (dropdown from the outlet's staff roster)
• Date (auto-captured)
• Time (auto-captured)
• GPS coordinates of the device at submission

The 15 items themselves:

• 15 toggles or Yes/No selectors, one per item
• A conditional photo upload that becomes mandatory when "No" is selected
• A conditional free-text "corrective action proposed" field that becomes mandatory when "No" is selected

Evidence and sign-off:

• A photo of the inspected dispensers (item 1 evidence)
• A photo of the fire extinguishers in position (item 5 evidence)
• A photo of the sand bucket (item 9 evidence)
• A photo of the vent pipe wire mesh (item 4 evidence)
• DSM digital signature
• Dealer counter-signature

Computed fields:

• Total non-conformities (a formula block counts every "No")
• Compliance score (percentage of "Yes" out of 15)
• A unique sequential audit ID via the unique ID block, e.g. ANX3-RO4218-WK22-2026

Clappia features that map directly to Annexure III

This is the field-by-field mapping. No coding, all drag-and-drop on the Clappia designer.

What does the workflow look like after submission?

Once the DSM hits submit, the regulation is silent on what happens next, but the practical reality is that the submission has to go somewhere and trigger something. Here's what a working setup does:

• Zero non-conformities: a confirmation email goes to the dealer with the PDF attached. The submission appears on the network dashboard as a green tick for that outlet for the week.
• One or two non-conformities: the system fires a WhatsApp message to the dealer and a Slack alert to the area HSE channel, with the auto-generated PDF. An approval task lands on the dealer's dashboard asking for the corrective action plan and a target closure date.
• Critical non-conformity (item 5 fire extinguisher unfit, item 14 electrical loose connection, item 11 intoxicated employee): an immediate WhatsApp call-out goes to the area manager and the regional HSE lead. The dispenser or affected facility can be flagged for shut-down until the issue is closed.

Closure is tracked. The same app the DSM uses to log the issue is the app the dealer uses to mark it closed, with a closure photo and a closure signature.

A real-world use case

A network HSE lead at a major Indian oil marketing company manages weekly inspections across 240 petroleum retail outlets in two states. Before going digital, paper Annexure III sheets came in by courier once a quarter. About 30% arrived incomplete, 10% never arrived, and the rest were impossible to trend.

After moving to the Clappia PNGRB audit checklist app, every DSM submits the weekly Annexure III check from a phone with mandatory photos on every "No". The dashboard shows compliance by outlet, by region, and by item. The recurring patterns surface fast: in 22 outlets, item 9 (sand bucket condition) was failing two weeks out of every five, traced to monsoon humidity in coastal regions. The fix was to switch to sealed-lid buckets, network-wide, and the failure rate on item 9 dropped to near zero within a quarter. None of that pattern was visible on paper.

Where Annexure III fits in the rest of the PNGRB stack

The weekly inspection is the most frequent check, but it is one of several. Use it alongside:

• PNGRB Annexure IV electrical audit checklist — runs once every three years, deep-dive electrical safety
• PNGRB Annexure V annual safety audit checklist — yearly, covers everything in Annexure III plus much more
• PNGRB Annexure VI(a) operator work permit — for any non-routine maintenance
• PNGRB Annexure VII tank-truck decantation checklist — every time a tank lorry arrives
• The full PNGRB checklist guide — parent hub explaining every annexure

FAQs

Who is supposed to do the Annexure III weekly inspection?

The operating personnel of the retail outlet, on rotational basis. In practice this means the DSMs on the outlet's roster take turns running the check week by week. The dealer or manager counter-signs.

Is the Annexure III format the same for all oil marketing companies?

The base 15 items are the same because they come from the PNGRB T4S Regulations. Some OMCs (HPCL, IOCL, BPCL, RIL, Nayara, Shell) add internal checks on top of Annexure III for their own brand or operations, but the regulatory minimum is identical.

What happens if a weekly inspection is missed?

A missed week is treated as a non-conformity. The annual Annexure V audit explicitly checks that weekly Annexure III records exist for every week of the year. TPIAs flag missing weeks in their conformity assessment reports.

Can a single DSM run Annexure III for multiple outlets in a cluster?

No. The regulation is clear: weekly safety inspection is by the operating personnel of that outlet, on rotational basis. A different person doing the check from outside the outlet's roster is not a substitute, though a company-authorised person can run the parallel Annexure V annual audit.

How long does a digital Annexure III submission take?

About five to seven minutes for a DSM familiar with the app, including the four mandatory evidence photos. Most of that time is the walk between the dispensers, tank farm, and the sales room — the form itself takes under a minute to fill once you're at each station.

Ready to take Annexure III off paper?

The weekly inspection is the smallest and most repeated checklist on the PNGRB stack, which makes it the best place to start when you go digital. Five minutes per outlet per week, mandatory photo evidence on every "No", instant routing of non-conformities to the right person, and a network dashboard that tells you which outlets are pulling their weight.

Ready to run Annexure III without paper? Sign up for free and build your first weekly inspection app on Clappia in under 10 minutes. No credit card, no contracts, no risk, just results.