DPE, asbestos, lead, termites, gas, electricity: the diagnostician's six certifications

Certification as a French property diagnostician is never granted “as a block”. It is delivered domain by domain, and there are six. Each answers a different risk, calls on different skills and renews on its own schedule. Understanding what separates them is the first strategic decision of the trade: it determines the order in which you build your offering.

Why six certifications rather than one

The dossier de diagnostic technique (technical diagnostic file) handed over on a sale or a letting is not a single document: it is a bundle whose contents depend on the property and the transaction. Each item answers its own regulations, with its own method, thresholds and instruments.

The legislator drew the obvious conclusion: competence is certified by domain, by a body accredited by Cofrac (the French accreditation body). A diagnostician who wants to offer the whole bundle must hold six separate certifications, each with its own theory and practical exams, its in-cycle monitoring and its recertification date. That is why retraining paths stretch out over time, and why “where do I start?” is far from a trivial question.

1. The energy performance survey (DPE)

The best known, and the one with the heaviest economic consequences now that the energy label conditions the ability to let certain dwellings and access to renovation support schemes.

It is also the most scrutinised domain. The study by Bérangère Lartigue, Laura Biewesch, Flore Marion, Erica Cochran and Françoise Thellier, “Energy performance certificates in the USA and in France—a case study of multifamily housing” (Energy Efficiency, 2022), compares the French DPE with the American Energy Star score on multifamily housing and shows how far modelling conventions and input-data quality determine the final result (see the study). Translated for the practitioner: time spent on site is not wasted, it is where the document’s reliability is decided.

The DPE falls under its own text, the order of 20 July 2023, separate from the one covering the other five domains.

2. Asbestos

Surveying materials and products containing asbestos in buildings whose planning permission predates the French asbestos ban.

This is the domain where the health risk is best documented and most deferred in time. The programme national de surveillance du mésothéliome (national mesothelioma surveillance programme) was set up in France in 1998 — one year after the ban — and tracks cases of this cancer of the pleura, whose effects can appear decades after first exposure; it was described by Marcel Goldberg and colleagues in “The French national mesothelioma surveillance program” (Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2006) (see the study). That long timescale explains how demanding the certification scheme is on this domain.

Asbestos exists in a plain version and a “with mention” version, the latter opening pre-works and pre-demolition surveys.

3. Lead

The constat de risque d’exposition au plomb (CREP, lead exposure risk report), which mainly targets degraded old paint in dwellings built before 1949.

The issue is childhood lead poisoning, whose source is generally that paint in old, deteriorated housing. Surveillance work published in the journal Environnement, Risques & Santé on childhood lead-poisoning screening in France between 1995 and 2002 documents the decline observed over the period and the weight of housing-related sources. Here too, the survey is not a transactional formality: it is a public-health instrument.

Like asbestos, lead comes in plain and “with mention” certifications.

4. Termites

The termite presence report, required within zones delimited by prefectoral order.

From a distance the subject looks minor. It is not, in the départements concerned: a subterranean termite infestation compromises a building’s load-bearing structure, and detection is a hard technical problem, since the insect works out of sight. The literature review “Detection and monitoring techniques of termites in buildings: A review”, published in International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation in 2024, catalogues detection methods and their respective limits. This is a domain where field experience counts for more than theory.

5. Gas

The internal gas installation condition report, covering installations above a certain age.

The risk is immediate, unlike asbestos: carbon monoxide poisoning. A French study published in the Revue d’Épidémiologie et de Santé Publique in 2014, on CO poisonings linked to domestic heating and hot-water equipment in mainland France between 2010 and 2013, highlights the weight of installation defects, ventilation problems and deficient maintenance. Those are exactly the points a gas survey must surface.

6. Electricity

The internal electrical installation condition report, on the same principle as gas: protecting the occupant of a dwelling whose installation has aged.

Older stock concentrates the defects. Installations designed before the main standards revisions of recent decades have often been modified year after year, circuit by circuit, without any overall upgrade: missing modern protective devices, cable sizes unsuited to current usage, absent equipotential bonding in wet rooms. The survey does not prescribe works, it documents anomalies — but it is often what triggers the upgrade.

In which order should you build your offering?

Three criteria, to be crossed:

Criterion	What it tells you
The local market	Termites only matter if your département is covered by a prefectoral order. The DPE is requested everywhere — hence also the most competitive.
The type of assignment	Ordinary sales and lettings: the six plain domains cover the essentials. Renovation and demolition sites: the asbestos and lead mentions are the way in.
The cost of the cycle	Each domain adds training, two exams, monitoring and recertification at seven years. A rarely used domain costs all year and never pays.

The most profitable habit is to think twelve months ahead: which surveys will I actually invoice next year? The rest can wait.

Take action

List the surveys genuinely in demand in your area before choosing your certification domains, then check the applicable prerequisites for each with an accredited body. Our Property diagnostician certification page summarises the scheme domain by domain, and our article on the certification route details the steps into the trade.