A competent person is someone who has the knowledge and skills to carry out a particular task, gained through training, qualification or experience. It is a term used throughout Australian work health and safety law, and it is one of the most misread phrases in the whole scheme, because people expect it to be a certificate. It is not.
What the law actually says
The model Work Health and Safety Regulations define a competent person, in general terms, as a person who has acquired through training, qualification or experience the knowledge and skills to carry out the task. Three things follow from that wording, and each one catches people out.
- Experience counts on its own. The definition lists training, qualification or experience. A tradesperson who has done a task for twenty years can be competent for it without holding a certificate in it.
- It is tied to a task, not to a person. Somebody is a competent person for something. The same worker can be the competent person for inspecting a harness and not for inspecting a scaffold.
- There is no register and no card. Nobody issues a competent person licence. If a document asks for one, it is asking you to nominate somebody and be able to justify the choice.
Who decides who is competent?
The business does. Under the harmonised laws that means the PCBU, which is the entity carrying the primary duty of care. Nominating a competent person is not a formality, because if something goes wrong the question asked afterwards is what the decision was based on.
In practice that means keeping something on file. Tickets and statements of attainment, a record of the work someone has actually done, a verification of competency for plant, or an assessment carried out by someone already competent in the task. The point is to be able to answer the question later without relying on memory.
Where some tasks are stricter
The general definition is the floor, not the ceiling. A number of tasks carry their own requirements, and for these the general wording does not apply.
- High risk work such as operating a crane, a forklift or certain scaffolding requires a high risk work licence, which is a formal licence issued by the regulator
- Asbestos removal and demolition carry their own licensing and, in some cases, their own definitions of who may carry out or supervise the work
- Electrical work requires an electrical licence, which is a separate scheme again
- Confined space entry, plant inspection and scaffold inspection each specify a competent person for the inspection, and for some of these the regulations describe the competency in more detail than the general definition does
So a document asking for "inspection by a competent person" and a document asking for "a licensed operator" are asking for different things, and the second cannot be satisfied by experience alone.
Why it appears all over your paperwork
Once you start looking, the phrase is everywhere. Pre-start inspections, plant checks, harness and lanyard inspections, scaffold handovers, excavation checks and confined space entries are all commonly written as tasks for a competent person. It appears in the great majority of the safe work method statements and safe operating procedures we publish, because that is how the regulations and the codes of practice are worded.
The gap that tends to show up on site is not the document. It is that nobody has decided who the competent person is for the task in front of them, so the line sits in the SWMS unanswered. A principal contractor reviewing your paperwork may well ask, and the answer needs a name behind it.
Does it mean the same thing everywhere in Australia?
Broadly, though not identically.
- New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory and the Commonwealth work from the model Work Health and Safety Regulations
- Western Australia is part of the harmonised scheme but under its own Work Health and Safety Act 2020 and regulations
- Victoria sits outside the harmonised scheme entirely, under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. It uses competent person in its own regulations, but the tasks it attaches to and the surrounding wording are not a copy of the model laws
The practical effect is that a document written for one jurisdiction can cite the wrong regulation for another, even where the underlying expectation is similar. Check the currency of any requirement with your state or territory regulator at the time you rely on it.
What this means for your documents
Two things are worth doing. First, wherever a document names a competent person, make sure someone has actually been nominated for that task and that there is a record of why. Second, check that the document is written for the jurisdiction you are working in, because the regulation it cites should be the one that applies to you.
Our documents are written per jurisdiction rather than reworded from a single national version. See SWMS requirements by state, read more on high-risk construction work, or browse the trade packs.
Where you need to record the thinking behind a control rather than just name it, our free Risk Assessment Builder lets you set the state, build the register and export it. The jurisdiction matters there too: a handful of controls name the regulator and the notice period, and those differ. It still has to be completed and approved by a competent person before anyone works to it.
Start from a proper SWMS, not a blank page
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This guide is general information, not legal or safety advice, and does not guarantee compliance. Laws and site conditions vary, so always check your state regulator and have documents reviewed by a competent person.