A principal contractor operating a 48-townhouse construction project in South East Queensland engaged OHSE Consultants after a young roofing worker was injured on site. The worker had not received adequate training, had not been signed onto the relevant SWMS, and had not been signed into the site, meaning the site's induction and sign-on controls had not been applied before work began. This prompted the principal contractor to engage OHSE Consultants to review the project's digital SWMS register.

OHSE Consultants was engaged to conduct a spot audit of the project's digital SWMS register, testing a random sample rather than the full set of documents. Five SWMS were sampled: subcontractor documents for external cladding, metal roofing, carpet laying and scaffold erection, plus the principal contractor's manual-handling SWMS, tested against the WHS Act and Regulation 2011 (Qld) for currency, specificity, consultation and approval.

All five SWMS failed compliance testing, a 100 per cent failure rate producing 32 non-conformances, including six findings against the principal contractor's own manual-handling SWMS. A metal roofing worker suffered a lost-time injury slipping on a wet pitched roof; that SWMS contained no wet-surface controls. Three documents relied on fall-arrest above two metres without a rescue procedure, and consultation was inadequate in four of five SWMS.

OHSE Consultants recommended a stop-work trigger stopping new high-risk work until compliant, site-specific SWMS and verified rescue arrangements were in place. It recommended revalidating all high-risk SWMS within 7 to 14 days, with independent verification, an accountable executive overseeing rectification, targeted training for supervisors and subcontractors, and a risk-weighted sampling program across active projects.

The audit produced an evidence-based record of a project-wide SWMS governance failure, escalated to board level with defined rectification requirements rather than managed as a site-level issue. Two deliverables were issued: an audit evidence report recording findings against each SWMS, and a board report setting out the escalation, immediate controls and recommended governance improvements.

The audit showed that SWMS were present in the register but the project lacked effective controls to ensure they were current, site-specific, consulted on and a 100% rejection rate at audit showed 2serious systemic issues. Escalating the finding to board level placed responsibility for rectification at the appropriate level, directing correction and independent verification of high-risk SWMS due to the high failure rate.