Australian Institute of Health & Safety

AIHS is Australia's peak professional body for workplace health and safety, with over 4,000 individual members and continuous representation on Standards Australia committees since 1958.

How they got started

The Institute traces its origins to 1948, when students in the first industrial Safety and Accident Prevention course at Melbourne Technical College formed the Safety Engineering Society of Australia. Eric Warburton was the first President and Chris Allan the first Secretary. The body was reconstituted in 1977 as the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA), and on 1 July 2019 adopted its current trading name to reflect the integration of health into the modern OHS profession.

What they stand for

AIHS positions itself as the custodian of the OHS profession in Australia: lifting capability through education and certification, advancing the evidence base via the OHS Body of Knowledge, and advocating for safer and healthier workplaces. The 2019 rebrand explicitly put health alongside safety. The Institute works with regulators, unions, employers and Safe Work Australia, and currently sits on around 15 Standards Australia committees.

How they help the industry

• Three-tier certification: Certified OHS Practitioner, OHS Professional, and Chartered OHS Professional (ChOHSP)
• OHS Body of Knowledge: owned and maintained by AIHS; underpins certification and university course accreditation
• National Health & Safety Conference: the flagship annual event (2026 edition scheduled for 15–17 June in Adelaide)
• Standards Australia representation: continuous since 1958, currently across around 15 WHS-related committees
• Policy submissions: to inquiries such as the independent review of SafeWork NSW

Notable initiatives

The OHS Body of Knowledge was first published in 2012 with funding from WorkSafe Victoria, with copyright later assigned to SIA/AIHS, and is now in its 3rd edition (2024). The three-tier ChOHSP, OHS Professional and OHS Practitioner certification scheme is aligned to the BoK and underpinned by mandatory CPD on a three-year renewal cycle. AIHS hosted the 22nd International Congress on Occupational Health in Sydney in 1987 and has run close to 100 state and national conferences over its history.

Why it matters for asbestos professionals

Asbestos assessors, removalists and occupational hygienists operate inside the wider WHS framework that AIHS helps shape, and their duty of care intersects directly with the OHS Body of Knowledge AIHS maintains. Holding AIHS membership or a ChOHSP credential signals to clients and regulators that you meet a recognised national standard of OHS competence, which strengthens trust on high-risk asbestos work.