Port of Brisbane, Incident and Near Miss Reporting

The Port of Brisbane sets hazard, near miss and incident reporting requirements for contractors in its Contractor Guidelines, which form part of any conditions of contract between Port of Brisbane Pty Ltd (PBPL) and a contractor (Port of Brisbane, 2025). Within the scope of the guidelines, contractors must report all incidents and near misses occurring on port-controlled sites, with contractors obligated to document worksite hazards beyond their control and escalate these to their Port of Brisbane contact. Reportable matters include health and safety, environment, property and process hazards that may involve or impact PBPL or others, as well as incidents and near misses.

Contractors must report injuries or incidents to their PBPL contact within 24 hours, and notifiable incidents or work-caused illness as soon as reasonably practicable, conduct their own investigation, and track corrective and preventive actions to completion (Port of Brisbane, 2025). PBPL may request copies of incident and investigation reports from contractors.

Contractors are obliged to proactively analyze the findings of all incident investigations and share lessons learned, both positive and negative, with their personnel and PBPL as a means to prevent future incidents (Port of Brisbane, 2025). PBPL requires contractors to participate in and conduct health and safety meetings, including pre-start and toolbox meetings, to discuss WHS issues and plan work activities.

PBPL has an externally certified business management system covering quality, work health and safety, and environment, and contractors may be required to provide or participate in compliance audits of their safety management systems (Port of Brisbane, 2025). For DMC ports, the Brisbane model demonstrates how systematic incident reporting can be extended across a diverse contractor community through clear contractual requirements and dissemination mechanisms.