Officer Due Diligence Under s27: The Six Limbs and the Evidence File That Protects Directors

Under s27 of the WHS Act, every officer — directors, and anyone who makes or participates in decisions affecting the whole or a substantial part of the business — owes a personal duty to exercise due diligence to ensure the PCBU meets its WHS obligations. It cannot be delegated to a safety manager, and it is prosecuted against the individual, separately from the company. (Victoria frames officer obligations under its OHS Act; the harmonised limbs below remain the practical benchmark for what good looks like.)

The uncomfortable implication: “I hired good people and assumed it was handled” is the fact pattern that fails the duty. Due diligence is an active verb — the six limbs describe what an officer must personally do and be able to prove.

Each limb maps to a simple artefact a regulator can ask for:

Limb 6 is where files fall over — verification means checking the system works, not receiving assurances that it does.

The sustainable approach is a standing quarterly cycle: a safety report to each board/leadership meeting (limbs 4–5), one site or process deep-dive per quarter (limbs 2 and 6), an annual training touch (limb 1), and resourcing decisions minuted as WHS decisions when they are (limb 3). Run the gap analysis with our Officer Due-Diligence Audit — it scores each limb and exports the working file.

Two connected exposures worth checking while you're here: your obligations baseline with the WHS Compliance Requirements Checker, and — because officer exposure peaks at the catastrophic end — the state industrial manslaughter positions in our industrial manslaughter penalties tool.

General information, not legal advice. Positions verified 22 July 2026.