Workforce
In mining, some of the biggest risks don’t come from broken equipment or unstable ground - they come from the way our brains are wired.
Even with control plans, take-fives, and risk assessments stacked high, mining engineers admit incidents still happen because the real world never plays out as neatly as the documents.
Deep underground in the Illawarra, a battery electric transporter called Driftex is rewriting the rules of coal mining by beating diesel on safety, speed and cost.
At the NSW Resources Regulator’s 33rd Mechanical Engineering Safety Seminar, Chief Inspector of Mines Anthony Margetts and Principal Inspector – Technical Russell Wood delivered a clear message: the industry must move beyond box-ticking and adopt smarter, outcomes-focused approaches to its most persistent hazards.
When global lenders assess mining projects, it is no longer enough to meet Australian legislation – financiers are demanding alignment with international ESG standards, and the gaps are costing companies time and money.
Contractor safety in Queensland’s coal sector isn’t just flawed—it’s dangerously broken, and one veteran risk expert is calling time on the whole system.
When it comes to critical minerals in emerging nations, geology is often the easy part - what makes or breaks a project is navigating the politics, markets, and risks that sit behind the orebody.
China quietly built the world’s most powerful critical minerals supply chains while other nations - including Australia - dozed through a geopolitical shift that now threatens economic security, trade independence, and defence readiness.
When Katrina Garven, Principal Database Consultant at Alias Database Services, reflects on how mining and exploration companies use geological data, she sees an industry undergoing a quiet revolution.
When Anton Kirsten took the stage at the Life of Mine | Mine Waste and Tailings 2025 conference in Brisbane, he wasted no time outlining a problem that’s been quietly growing into a full-blown crisis: there simply aren’t enough Engineers of Record (EoRs) to go around.
