What is WHS Act section 27 (Officer due diligence)?
Short answer
Section 27 of the model WHS Act imposes a personal duty on company officers (directors, CEOs, senior executives) to exercise due diligence to ensure their PCBU complies with its WHS duties. It has six limbs, covering knowledge, hazard understanding, resources, incident response, compliance and verification.
WHS Act s.27 says that an "officer" of a PCBU must exercise due diligence to ensure the PCBU complies with its duties. "Officer" is defined by reference to the Corporations Act — typically directors, the CEO, and senior executives who participate in decisions that affect the whole business.
Due diligence has six limbs (s.27(5)):
- Acquire and keep current knowledge of WHS matters relevant to the business.
- Gain an understanding of the nature of the operations and hazards / risks of the business.
- Ensure appropriate resources and processes are available to eliminate or minimise risks.
- Ensure appropriate processes for receiving and considering incident, hazard and risk information; and for responding in a timely way.
- Ensure processes for compliance with any duty or obligation under the WHS Act.
- Verify the provision and use of the resources and processes mentioned in (3)–(5).
Officer due diligence sits alongside the PCBU's primary duty of care — it is a personal duty, with personal liability. Industrial Manslaughter offences (in Vic, QLD, ACT, SA, WA and NT) explicitly capture officers.
RAE IQ's Officer Due Diligence module gives each officer a personal dashboard plus a quarterly attestation workflow against each of the six limbs.