Officer Due Diligence
Officer due diligence is the positive, proactive duty placed on company officers under Australian Work Health and Safety law to ensure their organisation complies with its safety obligations. It covers staying informed, understanding operations, and verifying that resources and processes are in place.
Officer due diligence is the personal duty Australian Work Health and Safety law places on officers, such as directors and senior executives, to exercise care in ensuring their organisation meets its WHS obligations. It is a proactive duty: officers must take reasonable steps to acquire knowledge of safety matters, understand the operation and its hazards, and ensure the business has and uses appropriate resources and processes to manage risk.
Why it matters
The due diligence duty makes safety a board-level and executive responsibility, not something that can be delegated and forgotten. Officers can be held personally accountable for failing to exercise due diligence, separate from the duty held by the organisation itself. This drives leadership engagement in safety and creates demand for clear, reliable safety information that officers can use to verify the business is managing risk.
How MapTrack helps
MapTrack gives officers visibility of equipment compliance, overdue inspections, and incident trends through dashboards and reports, supporting the due diligence element of verifying that safety processes are in place and working.
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Frequently asked questions
What are the elements of officer due diligence?
Australian WHS law describes due diligence through several reasonable steps an officer should take: keeping up to date with WHS matters, understanding the operation and its hazards, ensuring appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise risk, ensuring processes for receiving and responding to information about incidents and hazards, ensuring legal compliance processes are in place, and verifying that all of these are being used.
Who is considered an officer under WHS law?
An officer is generally someone who makes, or takes part in making, decisions that affect the whole or a substantial part of the business, such as company directors and senior executives. The focus is on decision-making influence rather than job title. Officers hold the due diligence duty personally, in addition to the primary duty of care held by the PCBU.
Related terms
Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU)
A person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) is the legal concept used in Australian Work Health and Safety (WHS) law to identify who holds the primary duty of care for safety. A PCBU is usually a company, partnership, sole trader, or other organisation rather than an individual. It must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers and other people affected by its activities.
Notifiable Incident
A notifiable incident is a serious workplace event that Australian Work Health and Safety law requires a PCBU to report to the relevant WHS regulator. The categories are the death of a person, a serious injury or illness, and a dangerous incident that exposes people to a serious risk, even if no one is hurt. The PCBU must notify the regulator immediately on becoming aware that a notifiable incident has occurred.
Safety Management System (SMS)
A safety management system (SMS) is a structured framework of policies, procedures, responsibilities, and processes that an organisation uses to manage workplace health and safety risks. It typically includes hazard identification, risk assessment, incident reporting, emergency planning, training, auditing, and management review. In Australia, an SMS aligns with the WHS Act duties and may follow standards such as AS/NZS ISO 45001.
Compliance Monitoring
Compliance monitoring is the ongoing process of tracking, measuring, and verifying that an organisation meets its legal, regulatory, and internal policy obligations. It involves scheduled audits, automated alerts, documentation reviews, and data collection to demonstrate adherence. Effective compliance monitoring is continuous rather than periodic, using real-time dashboards and exception-based alerts to surface issues before they escalate.
Incident Reporting
Incident reporting is the formal process of recording, notifying, and investigating workplace events including injuries, illnesses, near misses, property damage, and environmental releases. In Australia, certain incidents must be notified to the WHS regulator under the notifiable incident provisions of the WHS Act. Effective incident reporting captures what happened, where, when, who was involved, the immediate causes, and contributing factors.
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