An inquiry into an incident in an underground coal mine in Queensland determined that heating of combustible materials from a damaged cable in an intrinsically safe (IS) circuit led to a fire and damage to infrastructure. This incident highlighted the need to better understand whether certified IS power supplies and associated equipment can generate sufficient heat under fault conditions to ignite combustible and flammable materials commonly present underground.
Installation and use of certified IS systems in underground coal mines is a legislative requirement under the Queensland Coal Mining Safety and Health Regulations and is outlined in Resources Safety and Health Queensland (RSHQ) Recognised Standard 01. This includes cables connected to IS power supplies (IS PSUs), which may be exposed to accumulations of combustible and flammable materials, including oils and greases, coal dust, paper towel and rag on a roll (ROAR) resulting in cable damage, heating and ignition, with secondary burning of surrounding materials.
With limited published literature addressing heating and ignition of materials in conjunction with IS systems in underground coal mines, Simtars and the RSHQ Inspectorate, under the auspices of ACARP, commenced a laboratory-based investigation to substantiate the likelihood of thermal ignition of combustible and flammable materials due to heating by an IS circuit.
Initial results of the thermal ignition testing of selected IS PSUs revealed that sufficient thermal output can be generated through a resistive wire to cause ignition of the tested materials, with IS PSUs operating at its nominal power output. These findings confirm that the design, installation and maintenance of the IS systems and associated equipment must strictly adhere to Standards and safety protocols.
This presentation seeks to draw awareness of the high risk associated with deficient or inadequate installation, maintenance or repair of cables connected to IS power supplies. It highlights the necessity for frequent inspection of IS systems and associated equipment to prevent further incident in an underground coal mine.

Critical risk management is central to preventing fatalities and serious harm, yet building and maintaining high-quality critical risk frameworks can be resource-intensive. Bowties, control standards, performance requirements, verification activities and assurance plans often require significant expert input, repeated workshops and extensive document review. This can slow down implementation and create variation in quality across sites, hazards and business units.

This presentation will share Aeris Resources’ implementation journey in applying artificial intelligence assistance to strengthen and accelerate critical risk management framework development. The work focuses on using artificial intelligence to support, not replace, risk owners, operational leaders and safety professionals. The objective is to help teams review large volumes of existing safety documentation, identify relevant controls, test bowtie logic, improve control wording, strengthen verification requirements and highlight gaps or inconsistencies more efficiently.

The presentation will explore how artificial intelligence can assist with several practical critical risk management tasks, including extracting candidate controls from procedures and standards, separating preventative and mitigating controls, assessing whether controls are specific and verifiable, identifying potential erosion factors, and supporting the development of clearer performance requirements. It will also discuss how this approach can help teams move faster while improving the consistency and defensibility of critical risk outputs.

A key focus will be governance and quality assurance. Critical risk frameworks influence high-consequence decisions, so artificial intelligence outputs must be reviewed by competent people, linked back to source material and tested against operational reality. The presentation will discuss the importance of human-in-the-loop review, traceability, workshop validation, clear accountabilities and avoiding over-reliance on automated outputs.

The broader opportunity is to reduce the administrative burden involved in building and refreshing critical risk frameworks, allowing safety and operational teams to spend more time on control effectiveness, field verification and learning. This session will provide practical insights for resource companies considering how emerging technology can be responsibly introduced to improve the speed, quality and consistency of critical risk management without weakening ownership by people closest to the work.

The surrender of an explosives authority (licence) is increasingly being treated as an afterthought. Recent trends have typically involved licences to store explosives and mine closures, or operations entering insolvency. Regardless of the circumstances, every licence holder has legislative, legal, and moral obligations.

This is leading to a concerning trend of reduced control and an increased risk of unauthorised access. The obligations of an authority holder do not end simply because a licence has been surrendered, particularly where the duty of care has not been fully discharged. In some cases, obligations may remain for more than five years after surrender.

There are a number of key concerns when a licence is surrendered. The primary concern is the accountability of explosives. This applies regardless of the authority type, whether it is a shotfirer’s licence, a licence to manufacture explosives for an MMU, transport explosives, or store explosives. Where explosives have been kept, manufactured, or transported under that authority, they must be fully accounted for prior to surrender, consistent with a “cradle-to-grave” approach.

A secondary, but equally critical concern is securing access to explosives. Not all operations close under positive or controlled conditions, and this can introduce uncertainty. In these circumstances, there is potential for unauthorised access or other unwanted interference.

Recordkeeping is also of equal importance. It is not unreasonable for a police service or security agency to request evidence—either through the Inspectorate or independently—of stocktakes and acquittals for a period of up to five years.

Finally, the physical surrender or destruction of the licence itself is a critical, but often overlooked, part of the process.

Surrendering a licence is a multifaceted activity that should not be overlooked, and the importance of completing this process properly cannot be understated.

This presentation abstract covers the critical integration of situational awareness (SA) into blasting operations to enhance safety, reduce environmental impact, and prevent unplanned detonations.
Core Components
• Regulatory Compliance: Reference standards such as AS2187 for storage and use, the Explosives Act 1999 and Explosives Regulation 2017.
• Exclusion Zones: Define how SA helps in accurately setting and guarding these zones based on real-world variables like wind and face orientation.
• Misfire Management: Using SA to detect and safely handle unexploded materials post-blast.
• Planning of Activities: The SA utilised in putting into practice planned activities on a daily basis.

Effective blasting operations depend on more than just technical design; they require rigorous situational awareness to manage hazards from initiation to post-blast analysis. This presentation reviews best practices for developing comprehensive blast management plans (BMPs) in accordance with regulatory standards. We will discuss key components, including rigorous exclusion zone management, effective communication, identifying site-specific hazards, and the implementation of controls to mitigate ground vibration, flyrock, and fumes. By fostering a culture of active surveillance, operators can ensure compliance, protect personnel, and maintain public safety, particularly when navigating complex environmental conditions or operating near sensitive sites.

Remote mining operations still rely heavily on two-way voice. Voice is useful, familiar and proven, but it does not always provide enough context during an incident. The safety gap is not just whether people can talk; it is whether the right people can understand what is happening quickly enough to respond.

Traditional two-way systems, including DMR, TETRA and P25, continue to play an important role in operational communications. However, lessons from complex public safety and critical response environments have highlighted a critical capability gap: modern incidents can generate fast-moving digital information, while response teams may still be constrained by voice-centric communications. When events escalate, response teams may need more than a spoken radio call. They may need shared location information, secure messaging, live images or video, emergency alerts, user status, dispatch visibility and reliable communications continuity under degraded conditions.

This presentation explores the safety case for mission-critical, standards-based mobile broadband in remote mining operations. It considers how private Long Term Evolution and fifth-generation mobile networks can support controlled coverage, capacity, resilience and quality of service across mine sites, camps, haul roads, workshops and changing work fronts.

The session will examine how mission-critical push-to-talk, voice over IP calling, emergency alerting, geolocation, geofencing, secure messaging, live video, dispatch integration and ruggedised field devices can extend communications beyond basic voice coordination. These capabilities can support faster escalation, improved control-room visibility and more coordinated emergency response.

A key focus will be practical implementation in remote environments. Topics include mission-critical communications readiness assessment, on-site service survivability, power and backhaul resilience, local redundancy, device suitability, staged transition from existing radio systems and interoperability with legacy radio networks.

Rather than promoting a specific product or commercial solution, the presentation will provide a practical framework for assessing how legacy voice-centric radio networks can be complemented or progressively modernised using broadband-enabled systems engineered for high availability, local survivability and resilient operation. The intended outcome is to help mining operators, contractors and safety professionals consider how modern communications architectures can support worker safety, emergency escalation and situational awareness while exceeding the reliability expectations traditionally associated with legacy two-way radio networks.