Chain of Responsibility - Heavy Vehicle National Law Compliance

What is Chain of Responsibility (CoR)?
Chain of Responsibility is that part of the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) that makes the 10 Parties in the Chain responsible for the Primary Duty. This duty is to ensure the safety of their heavy vehicle transport activities, as far as is reasonably practical. Transport Activities are all activities, including business practices and making decisions, associated with the use of a heavy vehicle on a road. The focus is public safety.
Executives under the HVNL have an Executive Duty to exercise due diligence to ensure their organisation complies with its safety duties.
The 10 parties in the Chain of Responsibility are:
Heavy Vehicles are those with Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) or Aggregated Trailer Mass (ATM) of more than 4.5 tonne or a combination that includes a vehicle with a GVM or ATM of more than 4.5 tonne.
Shared Responsibility for the Safety of Transport Activities
The safety of Transport Activities is the shared responsibility of each Party in the Chain. You can’t contract out of your responsibility, but the level and nature of that responsibility will depend on things like the Party’s function in the Transport Activity, the nature of the public risk involved, and each Party’s capacity to control or reduce that risk.
This shared nature of the responsibility is often misunderstood. It can be a significant area for inadvertent breaches of the HVNL, particularly for those organisations managing significant numbers of suppliers and contractors involved in the use of heavy vehicles.
Chain of Responsibility is that part of the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) that makes the 10 Parties in the Chain responsible for the Primary Duty. This duty is to ensure the safety of their heavy vehicle transport activities, as far as is reasonably practical. Transport Activities are all activities, including business practices and making decisions, associated with the use of a heavy vehicle on a road. The focus is public safety.
Executives under the HVNL have an Executive Duty to exercise due diligence to ensure their organisation complies with its safety duties.
The 10 parties in the Chain of Responsibility are:
- Employers of Drivers
- Prime Contractors for Drivers (Contractors who engage self-employed drivers under contracts for service)
- Operators of vehicles (those responsible for controlling or directing the use of a heavy vehicle)
- Schedulers who schedule the transport of goods and passengers by a heavy vehicle, or those who schedule work and rest times for drivers
- Consignors of goods for road transport in a heavy vehicle (includes the person who has possession of, or control over, the goods immediately before road transport or someone who engages an operator to transport the goods)
- Consignees (who receive the goods at the end of the road transport)
- Packers of goods in the vehicle
- Loading managers for any goods in the vehicle
- Loaders of any goods in the vehicle
- Unloaders of goods in the vehicle
Heavy Vehicles are those with Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) or Aggregated Trailer Mass (ATM) of more than 4.5 tonne or a combination that includes a vehicle with a GVM or ATM of more than 4.5 tonne.
Shared Responsibility for the Safety of Transport Activities
The safety of Transport Activities is the shared responsibility of each Party in the Chain. You can’t contract out of your responsibility, but the level and nature of that responsibility will depend on things like the Party’s function in the Transport Activity, the nature of the public risk involved, and each Party’s capacity to control or reduce that risk.
This shared nature of the responsibility is often misunderstood. It can be a significant area for inadvertent breaches of the HVNL, particularly for those organisations managing significant numbers of suppliers and contractors involved in the use of heavy vehicles.
Our Services

Our Approach
If your organisation is involved in the use of a heavy vehicle on a road, then ensuring the safety of your Transport Activities and thinking strategically about your compliance efforts, should be ongoing. For this reason, we prefer to adopt a knowledge sharing approach, so you gain the skills in-house to continue with CoR compliance, long after our work together is concluded. The knowledge sharing model consists primarily of engaging in practical Workshops, targeted to your own Transport Activities and organisational structure. The training and workshops impart knowledge and use your own situation, to give you the opportunity to progress your organisation’s CoR compliance in a guided, practical and hands-on setting.
Our Services
Organisations vary in the level of their CoR compliance and the relevant skills they have in-house. For this reason, we customise our services to our client’s needs.
A sample of our Services are:
If your organisation is involved in the use of a heavy vehicle on a road, then ensuring the safety of your Transport Activities and thinking strategically about your compliance efforts, should be ongoing. For this reason, we prefer to adopt a knowledge sharing approach, so you gain the skills in-house to continue with CoR compliance, long after our work together is concluded. The knowledge sharing model consists primarily of engaging in practical Workshops, targeted to your own Transport Activities and organisational structure. The training and workshops impart knowledge and use your own situation, to give you the opportunity to progress your organisation’s CoR compliance in a guided, practical and hands-on setting.
Our Services
Organisations vary in the level of their CoR compliance and the relevant skills they have in-house. For this reason, we customise our services to our client’s needs.
A sample of our Services are:
- Executive Team and Manager CoR Briefings, Training and Workshops
- Knowledge Sharing Workshops on a wide range of CoR topics depending on your needs, including:
- Mapping your Transport Activities, CoR Parties and touch points;
- Managing your Shared Responsibilities; and
- Developing your CoR Implementation Plan
- CoR Maturity Workshop and CoR Maturity Presentation to Executive
- CoR Implementation Oversight and Mentoring
- CoR Risk Treatment Plans
- CoR Stakeholder Engagement Plans
Contact us now to have
a confidential discussion.
a confidential discussion.
Anne-Maree was instrumental in accelerating our CoR compliance with both Executive Training and a CoR Maturity Assessment Workshop. The training successfully raised ELT buy-in, and the Workshop was a fast, powerful and cost-effective way to get a clear snapshot of the state of our compliance and help define our forward priorities.”
T. Allen-Canny – Strategic Asset Management Leader, formerly Sunshine Coast Council and now founder of asset management leadership consultancy, Wagtail Red.