Chain of Responsibility Assessment

A Chain of Responsibility (CoR) Assessment is a structured review of your transport-related safety controls, evidence, and systems against the obligations placed on every party in the supply chain by the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL).

The HVNL establishes a national scheme for regulating heavy vehicles in a way that promotes public safety, and it applies a principle of shared responsibility across all parties who influence the transport task.

MAEZ approaches the assessment as an industry benchmark analysis — not a legal audit. The goal is to identify where your controls are strong, where gaps exist, and what you need to fix before an external auditor or regulator finds those gaps first.

The assessment covers role-based expectations for consignors, consignees, loaders, managers, contractors, and unloaders, and maps your current practices against what a regulator would look for under the HVNL's primary duty provisions.

For broader context on how CoR duties work, see About Chain of Responsibility.

Chain of Responsibility obligations extend well beyond the driver. If your business schedules, loads, receives, consigns, manages, or contracts heavy vehicle work, you hold a duty under the HVNL.

Key roles that benefit from an assessment include:

• Managers — who need a clear view of gaps before audit or enforcement pressure arrives.
• Contractors — whose controls should be verified before work starts.
• Consignees — where receiving windows, site rules, and unloading delays can shape the transport task.
• Unloaders — whose decisions can affect safety, scheduling, and responsibility allocation.
• Consignors — who carry role-based CoR controls, evidence, and SMS expectations.
• Loaders — whose loading decisions directly affect mass, dimension, loading, and safety risk.

If you are unsure how your role fits within the CoR framework, CoR consulting can help clarify your specific obligations.

MAEZ is unlike many compliance providers. We are not lawyers, ex-police, or ex-inspectors. We are industry professionals with years of operational experience in logistics, and we offer practical advice that works in every Chain of Responsibility Assessment.

Fresh, post-2018 content

Our assessment frameworks reflect the current legislative landscape. We do not offer you a CoR assessment framework that was used prior to the 2018 legislative changes. Our advice is up to date and fresh.

Managed journey

From the very beginning, the feedback we aim for — and have achieved — is one that shows we make your life as easy as possible through your CoR assessment journey. Our experience and method afford you peace of mind.

Targeted, constructive feedback

We understand that you need advice to strengthen your supply chain safety through a CoR assessment. We are not here to beat up your freight providers or the people who work for you. We feed back your gaps constructively, so you can act on them.

Professional, customer-driven service

Our assessments are written by professionals with decades of senior corporate experience. Reports are written for everyone in your organisation involved in the project. We exist because of our customers, and we are proud to be your partner in transport safety.

For teams that also need training to support the assessment findings, explore our Chain of Responsibility training options.

Matthew Wragg, Director and Principal Consultant at MAEZ, has spent decades in senior management roles across major Australian blue-chip companies including CSR, Linfox, Salmat, and Harris Scarfe.

His experience is coupled with a Masters Degree in Logistics Management from Sydney University, an Exemplar Audit Cert IV, and a Cert IV in Adult Education. This combination allows Matthew to bring a careful consideration of safety needs within a transport environment, while also applying the commercial thinking that matters when auditing or educating others in safety aspects of a transport task.

The result is an assessment that balances regulatory expectation with operational reality — practical enough to implement, rigorous enough to stand up to scrutiny.

If you would like to discuss how an assessment would work for your business, contact MAEZ.

MAEZ has delivered CoR assessments for businesses across logistics, retail, manufacturing, and waste sectors. Here is what some clients have said about the process and the reports:

• "Working with MAEZ was a breeze, the co-ordination of the assessment, the report itself and following information was all professional and of an outstanding quality. Looking forward to an ongoing partnership with MAEZ." — Miele, 2019
• "The report is great and very thorough, thank you so much for your help on this project." — Kmart, 2019
• "The feedback is great and very inexpensive for what we receive." — Sealed Air, 2018
• "The delivery of the final report was thorough." — Global Renewables, 2018

Clients consistently highlight the thoroughness of the report, the professionalism of the process, and the value of receiving constructive, actionable feedback rather than a generic checklist.

A CoR assessment is only valuable if it leads to action. MAEZ helps Australian businesses turn Chain of Responsibility, HVNL, WHS, transport safety, and chartered risk obligations into practical training, advisory, audit, and implementation pathways.

After the assessment identifies gaps, the next steps typically involve:

• Training — ensuring managers, executives, and operational staff understand their CoR duties. See our Chain of Responsibility course for practical, role-based training.
• Consulting — deeper risk review and control design through CoR consulting.
• Evidence and SMS — where structured records, reminders, audits, maintenance, driver diary checks, inductions, corrective actions, and evidence reporting are needed, CoRGuard at chainresponsibility.au supports the Safety Management System evidence workflow.

MAEZ defines the risk, obligations, controls, and implementation pathway. Where software is the right next step, CoRGuard supports the day-to-day evidence workflow that keeps your SMS alive between audits.

For more reading on duty-holder obligations, see Chain of Responsibilities: What Australian HVNL Duty Holders Need to Understand.