Welcome to Acenda. These Terms and Conditions (“Terms”) govern your use of the Acenda mobile application and platform (the “App”). By accessing or using Acenda, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the App. Simple.
Acenda is operated by HSEC Industries Pty Ltd (“we”, “us”, “our”) from Western Australia.
1. Who This App Is For
Acenda is a community and learning platform built for emergency response professionals, medical responders, and personnel working in mining and other high-risk industries. It is designed for people who already operate within a defined scope of practice, training, and regulatory framework.
You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. By using the App, you confirm you meet this requirement and have the legal capacity to agree to these Terms.
If you are not working in, training for, or professionally connected to these industries, this platform is probably not built for you, and the content here is not intended for your use.
2. The Big One: Medical, Rescue, and Training Content
Read this section properly. It matters.
Acenda hosts content that includes medical procedures, emergency response techniques, rescue methods, drill scenarios, training material, competition scenarios, and discussion of real-world incidents.
None of this content authorises you to perform anything.
Watching a video, reading a post, completing a quiz, winning a competition, attending a webinar in a Group, or having a conversation with a mentor on Acenda does NOT:
- Qualify you to perform any medical, rescue, or emergency procedure
- Extend, expand, or substitute for your scope of practice
- Replace formal training delivered by a Registered Training Organisation (RTO)
- Replace competency assessment, authorisation, or sign-off from your employer, supervisor, or clinical governance structure
- Give you any credential, ticket, or qualification recognised under Australian law, Work Health and Safety regulations, DMIRS requirements, or any equivalent regulatory body
Stay in your lane.
You agree to operate strictly within your current scope of practice, your current training, your current authorisations, and the clinical or operational governance of your workplace. If a procedure, drug, technique, or decision sits outside what you are trained, authorised, and competent to do, you don’t do it. Not because you saw it here. Not because someone in the community did it. Not because your quiz streak says you’re ready. Not ever.
We do not support heroes on Acenda.
Heroes get people killed. Themselves, their patients, their teammates. This platform exists to raise standards, share knowledge, and build competent, humble, safe responders. It does not exist to produce cowboys who think a scroll through a feed equals a ticket to act.
If you use information obtained from Acenda to perform a procedure outside your scope, authorisation, or competence, that is your decision and your liability. Not ours. Not the content creator’s. Not your mentor’s. Yours.
Clinical and operational judgement always sits with you and your employer.
Every workplace, every patient, every incident, every site is different. Content on Acenda is general in nature and cannot account for the specific circumstances you are facing. Use your training. Use your procedures. Use your chain of command. If in doubt, escalate.
3. Not Medical Advice
Nothing on Acenda constitutes medical advice, clinical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, whether to you personally, to a patient, or to anyone else. This applies to platform content, Group content, mentor conversations, and community posts equally. If you or someone else needs medical help, contact 000 (in Australia) or your local emergency number. If you need clinical guidance, talk to a qualified medical practitioner.
4. Accounts, Verification, and Your Credential Passport
You are responsible for:
- Keeping your login details confidential
- Providing accurate, truthful, and complete information about yourself, your qualifications, and your role
- Everything that happens under your account
Verification. You can join Acenda without verifying your identity, but verification unlocks the features where trust matters: displaying credentials, joining certain Groups, mentoring, and claiming competition prizes. Verification involves confirming your identity and, where relevant, your qualifications. During our launch phase, verification is reviewed manually by real humans, so allow reasonable time.
Your credentials are your responsibility. Uploading a qualification to Acenda means representing that it is genuine, current, and yours. We may verify credentials with issuing bodies. Verified status can be revoked at any time if we have reason to doubt a credential.
Misrepresenting your qualifications, training, credentials, employer, or role on Acenda is a serious breach of these Terms and will result in immediate termination.
We built this platform partly because credential fraud is a genuine problem in this industry. Don’t bring that here.
5. Memberships, Subscriptions, and Billing
Acenda operates on a tiered model:
- Free tier: open to everyone eligible under Section 1, with access to core community features. Some functions are not available on the free tier.
- Paid membership: unlocks the full platform. Paid membership can be purchased by you individually, or provided to you by your employer or site under a site subscription.
Billing. Subscriptions are invoiced directly by HSEC Industries Pty Ltd. We do not process payments through the app stores. Invoices are payable by the due date stated on them, and prices are in Australian dollars plus GST unless stated otherwise.
Non-payment. If a subscription lapses or an invoice goes unpaid, the account drops back to the free tier. We don’t delete your account, your profile, or your credential passport over a missed invoice. You lose the paid features until payment is sorted, that’s all.
Site-paid accounts. If your access is paid for by your employer or site, your subscription continues while their arrangement with us does. If that arrangement ends, your account drops to the free tier and you can choose to subscribe individually. Your account is always yours, not your employer’s, and Section 6 explains exactly what they can and cannot see.
Consumer rights. Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any consumer guarantee, right, or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law.
6. Site-Paid Accounts: What Your Employer Sees
This one is important enough to get its own section.
A paying site sees aggregate data only. Always.
A site that sponsors subscriptions for its crew can see crew-level statistics: overall readiness, participation rates, training coverage across the team. What it can never see is your individual activity by name. Not your quiz scores, not your posts, not your messages, not your streaks, not when you were last online.
Your employer paying for your subscription buys the crew visibility. It does not buy visibility of you.
7. User Content
Acenda allows users to post images, create events, send messages, share knowledge, and participate in community activity, including inside Groups.
You retain ownership of what you post. By posting it, you grant Acenda a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to host, display, reproduce, and distribute that content within the App and in connection with operating and promoting the platform.
You agree not to post content that:
- Is illegal, harmful, abusive, defamatory, or discriminatory
- Violates intellectual property rights, including copying RTO training materials, employer-owned procedures, or copyrighted medical resources without permission
- Contains spam, misleading claims, or fraudulent material
- Infringes on the privacy or rights of others
- Identifies patients, casualties, or incident subjects without proper authorisation and de-identification
- Breaches confidentiality obligations you owe to your employer, client, or regulator
- Presents unsafe, non-compliant, or out-of-scope practice as acceptable
- Encourages others to act outside their scope of practice or training
Don’t be an idiot.
If you’re about to post something and a small voice in your head is asking “should I really post this?”, the answer is probably no. If it would get you in trouble with your employer, your regulator, your RTO, or a court, it will get you in trouble here too.
8. Groups
Groups are branded spaces within Acenda, hosted and led by our SME Partners and other approved organisations.
- Each Group is run by its host, who appoints moderators for the day-to-day
- Acenda sets the platform rules, and those rules apply inside every Group, no exceptions
- Group moderators are held to the same standards as Acenda’s own moderation, and Acenda can step into any Group at any time
- Content inside Groups is still content under these Terms, everything in Sections 2, 3, and 7 applies
- Joining a Group may be open, or may require verification or approval by the Group host
A Group host’s expertise in their discipline is why they hold the Group. It does not make their Group a private kingdom, and it does not exempt anyone in it from these Terms.
9. Mentoring
Acenda’s mentoring features connect experienced members with people who want to learn from them.
- Mentors must be verified members and are approved by Acenda before they can mentor
- Mentoring is peer guidance, not professional advice, not clinical supervision, and not formal training
- Mentors speak for themselves, not for Acenda, and not for their employers
- Everything in Section 2 applies inside mentoring conversations. A mentor telling you how something is done is not authorisation for you to do it. Scope of practice still rules.
If a mentor encourages you to act outside your scope, report it. That’s not mentoring, that’s the hero culture we exist to end.
10. Community Standards
Acenda is built on a human-first philosophy. That means:
- Treat other members with respect, even when you disagree
- Disagree with ideas, not people
- No harassment, bullying, racism, sexism, homophobia, or any other flavour of being a dickhead
- No gatekeeping new or junior members. We were all new once
- No shaming people for asking questions. Asking is how people learn, and learning is why we’re here
- Share knowledge generously, credit sources honestly
- If you see something that breaches these standards, report it
We reserve the right to remove content and suspend or terminate accounts that breach these standards. No warnings required for serious breaches.
11. Events, Competitions, and Prizes
Acenda hosts events, drills, quizzes, daily competitions, and event-style competitions, some of which carry real prizes such as gear, course spots, and vouchers supplied by Acenda or our partners.
- Each competition runs under its own competition terms (entry, eligibility, judging, prizes), published with the competition. By entering, you accept those terms
- Acenda competitions are skill-based. Winners are determined by knowledge, speed, accuracy, or performance as stated in the competition terms, not by chance
- Prizes are as described, have no cash alternative unless stated, and are not transferable unless stated
- Cheating, account sharing, exploit abuse, or gaming the scoring in any competition gets you disqualified and may get you removed from the platform
- Acenda reserves the right to modify, postpone, or cancel events and competitions, and to verify the eligibility and identity of any winner before awarding a prize
- Some prizes (like course spots) are delivered by partner organisations, and their delivery terms apply once awarded
Any physical training, drill, or simulation activity organised via Acenda is the responsibility of the organising party and participants. Acenda is a platform, not an event operator, training provider, or WHS duty holder for your activity.
12. The Library and Regulations
The Acenda library includes reference material, learning content, and copies of legislation and regulations, including offline access to core regulatory material.
- Library content is provided for reference and learning. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for the official published versions of any legislation or regulation
- Regulations change. We work to keep library content current, but the authoritative version of any law is always the one published by the relevant government body
- Offline copies are snapshots. If you are relying on a regulation for a real decision, check the current official version
- Your site’s procedures, your employer’s documents, and any official directive always take precedence over anything in the Acenda library
13. Mutual Aid
Acenda includes mutual aid features that let sites, teams, and organisations find each other, connect, and coordinate support arrangements, including during real incidents.
Read this carefully, because it is the most important boundary in these Terms.
Acenda is not an emergency service.
It is not a triple zero replacement, not an emergency notification system, and not a dispatch service. In any emergency, call 000 first and follow your site’s emergency response procedures. Always.
- The mutual aid features are a communication and coordination tool. They help the right people find and talk to each other. Nothing more
- We do not guarantee that any message, request, or notification sent through the App will be delivered, seen, or acted on, and mobile coverage on remote sites makes that guarantee impossible for anyone to give
- Every decision to request, offer, activate, deploy, or decline mutual aid sits entirely with the sites, organisations, and people involved, under their own emergency management plans, protocols, and statutory obligations
- Nothing in the App replaces, modifies, or overrides any site’s emergency management plan, any mutual aid agreement between organisations, or any obligation under WHS or mines safety legislation
- Participating organisations remain fully responsible for their own emergency response arrangements, and for the competence, safety, and conduct of any personnel they deploy
If your site’s emergency plan and something in this App ever appear to point in different directions, your site’s plan wins. Every time.
14. Chat and Communication
Acenda provides messaging features. Use them responsibly.
Harassment, abuse, threats, unsolicited sexual content, or using messaging to misrepresent yourself, solicit clinical advice, or extract information you’re not entitled to will result in account suspension or termination.
Private messages are between you and the recipient. Acenda may access messages where required by law, to investigate breaches of these Terms, or to protect the safety of the community.
15. Prohibited Activities
You agree not to:
- Use the App for any unlawful purpose
- Attempt to gain unauthorised access to systems, accounts, or data
- Interfere with the App’s functionality or security
- Impersonate another person, employer, regulator, or entity
- Misrepresent your qualifications, role, or credentials
- Scrape, harvest, or extract data from the App without written permission, including member details from Groups, events, or competitions
- Share your account or use another member’s account, including in competitions
- Use the App to recruit members away from their current employers in breach of any agreement they hold
- Use Acenda content to deliver commercial training without a licence from us
- Use the App in any way that could bring Acenda, HSEC Industries, or the broader emergency response community into disrepute
16. Account Suspension and Termination
We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your account at any time, with or without notice, if you:
- Breach these Terms
- Engage in behaviour that harms the community, the App, or other members
- Misrepresent your credentials or identity
- Cheat in competitions or abuse platform features
- Use the platform to encourage unsafe or out-of-scope practice
If your account is terminated for breach, no refund is payable on any subscription period already invoiced. You can also close your own account at any time.
17. Intellectual Property
All trademarks, logos, designs, and app content (excluding user-generated content) are the property of Acenda and HSEC Industries Pty Ltd and may not be used without prior written permission. Content contributed by SME Partners and Group hosts remains theirs, licensed to us for use on the platform.
18. Disclaimer of Warranties
Acenda is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We don’t guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation. We don’t guarantee that content is accurate, current, complete, or suitable for any particular purpose. We don’t guarantee message delivery, notification timing, or offline sync, particularly in areas with limited coverage.
To the maximum extent permitted by the Australian Consumer Law and other applicable law, we exclude all warranties, express or implied.
Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any consumer guarantee, right, or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law.
19. Limitation of Liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Acenda, HSEC Industries Pty Ltd, its directors, officers, employees, contractors, SME Partners, Group hosts, mentors, and content contributors shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages arising from:
- Your use of, or inability to use, the App
- Any content posted on the App by users, Group hosts, SME Partners, mentors, or third parties
- Any action you take, or fail to take, based on content accessed through the App
- Any procedure, technique, or decision you perform or make in reliance on App content, Group content, or mentoring conversations
- Any mutual aid request, response, non-response, deployment, or coordination activity connected with the App’s mutual aid features
- Any reliance on library content, including regulatory material, in place of official published versions
- Any interruption, loss, or corruption of data, or any failure of message delivery or notification
Where liability cannot be excluded, our total liability to you is limited to the amount you have paid us (if any) in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.
20. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Acenda and HSEC Industries Pty Ltd from any claims, damages, losses, or costs arising from:
- Your breach of these Terms
- Your content
- Your actions taken in reliance on content accessed through the App, particularly any action taken outside your scope of practice, training, or authorisation
- Your misrepresentation of qualifications, credentials, or identity
- Your conduct in any mutual aid activity, competition, Group, or mentoring relationship
21. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we’ll let you know through the App. Continued use after changes means you accept the updated Terms.
22. Governing Law
These Terms are governed by the laws of Western Australia, Australia. You agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Western Australia for any dispute arising under these Terms.
23. Contact Us
Questions about these Terms?
Email: support@acenda.online
Operator: HSEC Industries Pty Ltd
App Name: Acenda