Can one of my own staff be the competent person?

The definition does not exclude an employee — it turns on knowledge and skills from training, qualification or experience, not on employment status. Whether a particular person meets it is a judgement about that person. The in-house versus external question, including one vendor claim we could not verify, is covered on our page about who can inspect racking.

Is there a competent person qualification I can send someone on?

There are commercial training courses. There is no qualification recognised by a regulator, a standards body or any register, because no such register exists for racking inspection in Australia.

Does the Australian Steel Institute certify racking inspectors?

No. It publishes a Code of Practice for Rack Safety Inspections, which is an industry practice guide. It recommends how inspections should be run and speaks to inspector competency. It issues no credential and keeps no list of certified people.

How many years of experience is enough?

No source we have found puts a number on it, and we will not invent one. Ask what the person has actually inspected, how recently, and in what kind of facility — a warehouse full of drive-in racking is a different problem from a stockroom of light selective bays.

The "competent person" standard, and why it is not a credential

Every piece of Australian racking guidance says the formal inspection should be done by a competent person. None of them says who that is. The regulators define the term as knowledge and skills acquired through training, qualification or experience — a description of a state, not a card anybody issues.

Last updated 2026-08-23

The definition, in the regulator’s own words

WorkSafe Victoria defines it as "a person who has acquired, through training, qualification or experience, the knowledge and skills to carry out the task". That is the whole definition. Read it again and notice what it does not contain: an issuing body, an exam, an expiry date, a register, or a minimum number of years.

SafeWork NSW and SafeWork SA use the same undefined term without narrowing it further. Three regulators, one phrase, no scheme behind it.

This is not sloppiness. The same formula appears across Australian work health and safety guidance for dozens of tasks, precisely because the competence needed for a task varies with the task. What is unusual about racking is that the task is a structural judgement about a loaded, weight-bearing steel system, and yet nothing sits behind the phrase to tell a buyer who qualifies.

Three routes in, and only three

Training, qualification, or experience. The definition offers those as alternatives, not a set to be collected — a person can arrive at competence by any of them.

In practice, the people doing this work in Australia have arrived from a handful of directions, and understanding which one you are dealing with tells you more than any claimed credential could.

Structural or civil engineers, who bring the load-and-deflection judgement but not always the warehouse-floor experience.
Long-serving racking installers and dismantlers, who have seen thousands of frames go up and come down and can read a damaged upright at a glance.
Warehouse and WHS managers who have taken vendor or in-house training and now run the routine internal side of things.
Full-time inspection specialists who do nothing else, most of whom came from one of the first two groups.

The comparison that makes the gap obvious

A forklift driver in Australia cannot legally operate a counterbalance truck without a high risk work licence. There is a licence class, an assessment, a card, and a regulator that issues it. Getting a forklift licence is a defined process with a defined outcome.

The person who inspects the racking that same forklift drives into needs no licence at all. There is no class, no assessment, no card, no register and no issuing body — a finding we set out in full under who is allowed to inspect racking.

The asymmetry is strange but it is real, and it is the single most useful thing to understand before you engage anyone. You are not checking a credential, because there is nothing to check. You are assessing a person.

What a provider can honestly claim

Plenty of firms describe themselves as certified, accredited or qualified racking inspectors. None of those words has a referent in Australia. There is no body that certifies, no scheme that accredits, and no qualification specific to racking inspection.

What a provider can honestly tell you is concrete and checkable: how many years they have spent inspecting racking specifically, what they did before that, whether they carry professional indemnity and public liability insurance for this work, whether they are familiar with the Australian Steel Institute’s Code of Practice for Rack Safety Inspections, and what one of their reports looks like. Those questions are laid out in choosing between providers.

The Australian Steel Institute document is worth naming here because it is the thing most often mistaken for a credential. It is an industry practice guide that recommends how inspections should be conducted and speaks to inspector competency. It certifies nobody and operates no register.

Why the judgement is not one you can borrow

The competent person’s job is to look at a real structure carrying real load and form a view about it. That view depends on the frame profile, the beam connections, the floor, the height, what is stored, how it is put away, and what has hit it. It is not transferable between sites and it is not something a page can hand you.

This site will not tell you whether your racking is sound. Nothing written here — or anywhere else online — substitutes for someone standing in front of the frames. If a forklift has hit an upright and you are looking at it now, that is a reason to call someone today, not to keep reading.

What you can usefully do from a desk is understand the process you are buying, which is covered in the report you end up with, and understand where racking sits in the broader warehouse safety picture.

Common questions

Can one of my own staff be the competent person?: The definition does not exclude an employee — it turns on knowledge and skills from training, qualification or experience, not on employment status. Whether a particular person meets it is a judgement about that person. The in-house versus external question, including one vendor claim we could not verify, is covered on our page about who can inspect racking.
Is there a competent person qualification I can send someone on?: There are commercial training courses. There is no qualification recognised by a regulator, a standards body or any register, because no such register exists for racking inspection in Australia.
Does the Australian Steel Institute certify racking inspectors?: No. It publishes a Code of Practice for Rack Safety Inspections, which is an industry practice guide. It recommends how inspections should be run and speaks to inspector competency. It issues no credential and keeps no list of certified people.
How many years of experience is enough?: No source we have found puts a number on it, and we will not invent one. Ask what the person has actually inspected, how recently, and in what kind of facility — a warehouse full of drive-in racking is a different problem from a stockroom of light selective bays.

Sources

WorkSafe Victoria — Pallet racking operation and maintenance — Source of the competent person definition quoted here, and of the 12-month formal inspection guidance. Retrieved 2026-08-17.
SafeWork NSW — Pallet racking guide — Uses the same undefined "competent person" term for formal inspections. Retrieved 2026-08-17.
SafeWork SA — Pallet racking — Third state using the same term without defining a credential behind it. Retrieved 2026-08-23.
Australian Steel Institute — Code of Practice for Rack Safety Inspections — Industry practice guide, dated 22 November 2018. Recommends inspector competency; establishes no register or certification. Retrieved 2026-08-17.

Part of our guide to pallet racking inspection.