SAFETY COMPLIANCE AUDITS: RISK OR REASSURANCE?

In the world of Body Corporate, you will come across many different types of audits.  Some of the more commonly known types include:

• Financial (e.g. Accounting, tax)
• Compliance (e.g. WHS, fire safety)

It is critical you know your obligations and understand the legislative requirements when it comes to safety compliance audits. 

The auditing process is typically undertaken by an unbiased and external contractor/technician/qualified and licensed professional and is aimed at helping the body corporate manage and mitigate risk, by identifying gaps or breaches that can potentially create harm and liability exposure.  Sounds worthwhile, right?!

An unfortunate biproduct of auditing is concern, fear and anxiety, whereby an audit may be considered:

• Unnecessary: “We are doing okay without an audit!”
• Expensive: “This could cost us a fortune to do and a bigger fortune to fix everything!”
• Exhausting: “This is going to take up a lot of time and energy to deal with!”

No matter what the argument might be, the bottom-line is that proactive compliance and mitigation of risks is infinitely more cost effective and less daunting than reactive compliance, which can involve regulatory authority intervention.  This is, of course, in addition to your own conscious reminding you that you were deemed attributable to causing someone an injury, permanent incapacitation, or worse!

Let me now put all this into the context of bodies corporate whereby the key stakeholders are typically the Body Corporate (Committee), the Building Manager/Caretaker and the Strata Manager.  It is fair to say that there is significant pressure on bodies corporates to ensure compliance, which in many cases is a collaborative process and depends heavily on those with responsibility to manage compliance on their behalf.  Compliance is a vast and forever evolving landscape, with the responsibilities and obligations placed on this area only increasing, it can be an enormous challenge to keep up with.  This is, however, where an (independent) audit comes into play!

Safety compliance audits are factual and evidence-based, determined on what was observed at the time of the inspection and is typically conducted in two parts:

1. Development (What we will or must do) is about checking that policies, plans and procedures are in place and kept up to date, to manage compliance systematically. The auditor will measure what you have developed against legislative requirements, codes of practices, standards and guides.
2. Implementation (What we are doing) is about checking that places, people and practices align with either what you said you will do, what legislation states you must do, and or what codes of practices, standards and guides advise you should do.

One of the many benefits of an audit is that the report you receive will include legislative references highlighting why you must do or are recommended to do something, as well as risk ratings to help prioritise what to rectify first, imagery for visual understanding and recommendations for corrective action by experienced experts.

With all of this taken into consideration, it is safe to say that the benefits of an audit far outweigh the negatives, making it a worthwhile and invaluable investment overall.  I trust this article provides you with some comfort and explains why an audit is most definitely your friend!

Article contributed by Kara Neale, Compliance Co-Ordinator, Strata Compliance Solutions