The NHVR fatigue management standards are the seven rules your fatigue system gets audited against if you run drivers on anything other than standard hours. Most operators know they exist. Far fewer can tell you what Standard 4 actually requires, or why an auditor wants a signed quarterly statement under Standard 5.
That gap costs money. Fatigue made up 23% of all breaches the NHVR detected in 2025, and the penalty for breaching the fatigue duty jumped from $8,000 to $26,610 when the amended HVNL started on 1 August 2026. (We broke down the full changes in fatigue duty penalties 2026.)
This guide walks through each standard in plain English: what it means, what it looks like in a real depot, and the evidence an auditor will ask you to hand over. We also cover how the 2026 switch from BFM and AFM to ACA-Fatigue changes things, because it does.
What are the NHVR fatigue management standards?
They’re the performance standards set out in the NHVR’s Fatigue Management Accreditation Guide. Under NHVAS, any operator accredited for Basic Fatigue Management (BFM) or Advanced Fatigue Management (AFM) had to meet all seven, and independent auditors checked them on a regular cycle.
The guide is refreshingly blunt about the idea behind them. Write down how you manage fatigue, then prove you actually do it. That written method becomes your Fatigue Management System (FMS), and the folder or platform holding it is your FMS Manual.
Here are the seven at a glance:
| # | Standard | The short version |
| 1 | Scheduling and rostering | Plan trips and rosters inside legal or approved limits |
| 2 | Health and wellbeing for performed duty | Drivers are medically and personally fit to work |
| 3 | Training and education | Everyone in the system knows fatigue and can prove it |
| 4 | Responsibilities and management practices | Clear roles, clear consequences, open communication |
| 5 | Internal review | You audit yourself before the auditor does |
| 6 | Records and documentation | Evidence is kept, controlled and easy to find |
| 7 | Workplace conditions | Cabs, sleepers and depots support real rest |
Do they still apply after 1 August 2026?
Yes, but the wrapper around them has changed. The NHVR can no longer grant new NHVAS accreditation. BFM and AFM are being replaced by Alternative Compliance Accreditation for Fatigue (ACA-Fatigue) under the new Heavy Vehicle Accreditation (HVA) scheme.
If you already hold BFM or AFM, it stays valid until it expires, gets cancelled, or you choose to move across. You keep being audited against the seven standards until then. And the practices they describe (documented rosters, fitness checks, trained schedulers, internal review, solid records) are exactly what you’ll need to show in an ACA-Fatigue safety case anyway. So learning them properly isn’t wasted effort. More on that further down.
The NHVR fatigue management standards, one by one
Standard 1: Scheduling and rostering
This is the one auditors spend the most time on, and for good reason. It says trips and rosters must build in fatigue management and stay within legislated or approved limits. Rosters also have to consider each driver’s recent work history, ability, welfare and, where it makes sense, their preferences.
In practice that means a few things people often miss. You need a written policy on how drivers returning from leave are rostered, since their fatigue risk is higher. You need guidelines for relief and casual drivers. And drivers should have some say in schedules and enough notice of changes to stay compliant.
What an auditor wants to see: your documented rostering procedure, copies of regular rosters, and proof you review them. The easiest proof is planned hours sitting next to actual hours from your work diaries. If you’re still on paper, our truck driver logbook guide covers what a compliant entry looks like.
Standard 2: Health and wellbeing for performed duty
Drivers have to be fit to do the job, medically and on the day. Medicals follow Austroads’ Assessing Fitness to Drive guidelines and must include screening for sleep disorders. The minimum frequency is every three years for drivers aged 49 or under, and every year from age 50.
The medical is only half of it. You also need a written fitness-for-duty process covering health, drugs and alcohol, wellbeing and fatigue, plus a way for drivers to say “I’m not fit” before or during a shift without getting punished for it. This lines up closely with the expanded unfit-to-drive duty under the amended HVNL, which now covers all heavy vehicles over 4.5 tonnes GVM.
What an auditor wants to see: a medical register with expiry dates, your fit-for-duty procedure, and evidence that medical advice actually changed how someone was rostered.
Standard 3: Training and education
Everyone who touches the fatigue system has to understand it, not just drivers. Drivers need competency in TLIF0005 (Apply a fatigue risk management system). Schedulers, and anyone supervising drivers or schedulers, need TLIF0006 (Administer a fatigue risk management system). Courses must come from an NHVR-approved RTO.
The trap here is records. It’s common to find a driver who did the course but whose statement of attainment isn’t on file. To the auditor, that’s the same as no training.
What an auditor wants to see: training records for every person with a fatigue role, who delivered the training and when, refresher dates, and fatigue content in your induction.
Standard 4: Responsibilities and management practices
Every task in your FMS needs a named owner, and those people need to know it. The standard also asks for a way to deter non-compliance (counselling and disciplinary processes) and a communication channel between drivers and management.
This matters beyond accreditation. Under Chain of Responsibility, “everyone thought someone else was checking” is not a defence. Our Chain of Responsibility 2026 guide explains why clear roles are your first line of protection.
What an auditor wants to see: a task and responsibility list, role statements that mention fatigue, records of toolbox talks or notices, and examples of corrective action taken.
Standard 5: Internal review
Think of this as auditing yourself so the external audit holds no surprises. The standard requires a documented internal review at least every 12 months, done by someone not responsible for the area being reviewed where that’s practical. You also need a process to log, investigate and fix non-compliances, and to check whether fatigue played a part in any incident.
The piece people forget is the quarterly compliance statement. Signed by the responsible person, it counts drivers under the accreditation, new drivers inducted, work and rest records reviewed, compliant versus non-compliant records, current and expired medicals, fatigue-related incidents, and breach notices received.
What an auditor wants to see: signed quarterly statements, your non-conformance register, incident investigations, and completed annual reviews. Pulling those numbers by hand every quarter is painful, which is where NHVR fleet reporting tools earn their keep.
Standard 6: Records and documentation
If it isn’t written down and findable, it didn’t happen. Policies must be authorised, current and available wherever the work is done. Records need to be legible and kept for at least three years. You also need a register of everyone with a designated fatigue responsibility, and every driver’s work and rest records reviewed each quarter.
Paper works, but it’s where most operators come unstuck: diary pages in three depots, superseded procedures that nobody archived. An NHVR-approved Electronic Work Diary stores work and rest records in one auditable place and flags breaches as they happen rather than at quarter end.
What an auditor wants to see: document control (version history), the responsibility register, three years of work diary records, and timesheets or pay records that match the diaries.
Standard 7: Workplace conditions
The last standard is about where drivers actually rest. Workplaces, including the truck, have to support real sleep, and meet WHS law and the relevant Australian Design Rules. If drivers sleep in the vehicle away from home, including two-up teams, the sleeper must comply with ADR 42.
What an auditor wants to see: a policy covering cab comfort, seating, sleeper berths, air conditioning and depot rest facilities, plus confirmation that sleeper cabs used for stationary rest meet ADR 42.
BFM vs AFM: same seven standards, different stakes
BFM and AFM operators are audited against the same seven standards. The difference is how much flexibility you’re given, and how hard you have to work to justify it.
BFM gave fixed, more flexible hours than standard hours, including up to 14 hours of work in a 24-hour period. AFM let operators set their own hours, assessed case by case on risk. That’s why a few requirements only bite for AFM. The clearest example sits inside Standard 1: if a driver is ever allowed to go past your normal approved operating limits, you need documented countermeasures for managing those extra hours.
In short, BFM is about proving you follow a known set of rules. AFM was about proving your own rules are safe. ACA-Fatigue takes the AFM approach and applies it to everyone who wants hours outside standard hours.
How the 2026 HVNL changes affect NHVR fatigue management standards
The biggest shift is structural. Under the HVA scheme you can’t hold fatigue accreditation on its own anymore. To get ACA-Fatigue you must also hold General Safety Accreditation (GSA), which audits your whole safety management system, not just fatigue. You can apply for both at once.
From there, the NHVR works with you to set Alternative Compliance Hours (ACH). To apply you submit a safety case and your Fatigue Risk Management System, measured against Schedule 1 of the Safety Management System Standard 2026 and the Ministerial Standard for Alternative Compliance Hours.
A few hard edges worth knowing:
- Outer limits still apply. For solo drivers, work in any 24-hour period can’t exceed 15.5 hours, and stationary rest must include at least 7 continuous hours.
- Templates exist. The NHVR has published ACH templates based on common BFM and AFM hours, so most operators won’t have to design hours from scratch.
- Seven risk principles shape your hours. Keep continuous work short, schedule frequent breaks, allow enough time to sleep, favour night sleep, avoid shifts ending between midnight and 6 am, keep shifts as short as you reasonably can, and plan reset breaks of at least 30 hours that include two night periods.
- Renewals trigger the move. Existing BFM and AFM accreditations can’t be amended or renewed after 1 August 2026. When yours comes up, you transition.
Our BFM/AFM to ACH transition guide covers the step-by-step switch, and the work and rest hours explainer compares the hour sets side by side.
Audits and legal exposure are sharper too
HVA audits use the PSOE method: is each control Present, Suitable, Operating and Effective? That last word is the one to worry about. A tidy manual that nobody follows now fails on paper as well as in practice.
SMS audit findings can also be used as court evidence in Chain of Responsibility cases. So the gaps an auditor writes up aren’t just an accreditation problem anymore. With Category 1 CoR penalties now at $4,230,550 for a corporation, that’s worth taking seriously.
Where fleets usually trip up
Most audit findings we hear about aren’t dramatic. They’re small, boring gaps that pile up:
- Rosters that were planned properly but never compared against what drivers actually worked.
- Medicals that lapsed quietly because nobody tracked expiry dates.
- A scheduler who has been doing the job for years but never completed TLIF0006.
- Quarterly compliance statements that were filled in but never signed.
- An internal review done by the same person who runs the process being reviewed.
- Old procedures thrown out instead of archived for three years.
None of these need new equipment to fix. They need a system that reminds people, keeps records in one place, and makes the evidence easy to pull.
A quick self-check before your next audit
- Written rostering procedure, including drivers back from leave and relief drivers
- Planned rosters reviewed against actual work and rest records
- Medical register current, with sleep disorder screening included
- Fit-for-duty and self-reporting procedure in place and known to drivers
- TLIF0005 on file for every driver, TLIF0006 for every scheduler and supervisor
- Named owner for every FMS task, plus a responsibility register
- Signed quarterly compliance statements for the last four quarters
- Annual internal review done by someone independent of the process
- Three years of work diary records, timesheets and superseded documents
- Sleeper cabs used for stationary rest confirmed as ADR 42 compliant
- Renewal date checked, and an ACA-Fatigue plan in place if it’s coming up
If you’re building your system from scratch, our driver fatigue management plan template is a solid starting point.
The bottom line
The NHVR fatigue management standards aren’t really about paperwork. They’re a checklist for whether your business can prove it keeps tired drivers off the road. Plan hours properly, check people are fit, train everyone involved, give each task an owner, review yourself honestly, keep the evidence, and give drivers somewhere decent to sleep.
The 2026 move to ACA-Fatigue raises the bar on the “prove it” part. Operators who already run these standards well will find the switch fairly painless. Those who’ve been getting by on a manual in a drawer will not.
Manage Vehicle brings your fatigue and mass management tools, NHVR-approved EWD, driver records and compliance reporting into one platform, so the evidence your auditor asks for is already there. Book a demo and we’ll show you how it maps to each standard.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Fatigue rules and accreditation arrangements can change, so check current requirements with the NHVR or a qualified adviser before making compliance decisions.
FAQ
How many NHVR fatigue management standards are there?
Seven: scheduling and rostering, health and wellbeing for performed duty, training and education, responsibilities and management practices, internal review, records and documentation, and workplace conditions.
Do the standards apply if my drivers only work standard hours?
Not as accreditation requirements. They apply to operators accredited for BFM or AFM. You still carry the primary duty to manage fatigue risk under Chain of Responsibility, and the standards are a sensible benchmark for doing that.
Is BFM still available in 2026?
No new BFM or AFM accreditation can be granted after 1 August 2026. Existing accreditations stay valid until they expire or are cancelled, then operators move to ACA-Fatigue, which requires General Safety Accreditation as well.
How often do heavy vehicle drivers need a medical under fatigue accreditation?
At least every three years for drivers aged 49 or under, and every year for drivers aged 50 or over. The exam must include screening for sleep disorders.
How long do I need to keep fatigue records?
At least three years. That includes work diary records, the FMS Manual and any superseded procedures.
What training do schedulers need?
TLIF0006 Administer a fatigue risk management system, from an NHVR-approved RTO. Drivers need TLIF0005 Apply a fatigue risk management system.