Salus Technical shares process safety learning in Queensland

David is back in Aberdeen having shared our North Sea expertise with Australia’s mining sector.

Our founder, David Jamieson, was invited to speak at the 2026 Queensland Mining Industry Health & Safety Conference, held at The Star Gold Coast from 16 to 19 August under the theme “Our Greatest Resource, Our People”.

The North Sea oil and gas sector has spent decades managing major accident hazards through barriers and critical controls, and mining is now adopting the same discipline. That convergence put David in front of a room wrestling with problems the offshore industry knows well, from keeping the controls that prevent fatalities clear and measurable to making sure the people working next to the hazard actually trust them.

David brought our offshore experience to an audience of mining safety professionals. His session, “Critical Controls That Actually Control: Closing the Gap Between Work as Imagined and Work as Done”, examined the difference between how critical controls are written down and how they are understood on the ground by supervisors and workers.

Recent changes to Queensland mining law now require operators to define, implement and verify critical controls for principal hazards, and to build them into their safety and health management systems and principal hazard management plans. The Resources Safety and Health Legislation Amendment Act 2024 brought critical control provisions into force from June 2025, with full compliance required by June 2026, drawing on the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) critical control management guidance updated in 2026.

It’s exactly the barrier-based approach we built our bowtie analysis software, Bowtie Master, to support, helping operators map material unwanted events, set clear performance standards for their critical controls and verify that those controls hold up in day-to-day operations.

A sombre moment came when the conference paused to remember miners who lost their lives this year, a stark reminder of the human cost behind every control that is allowed to degrade.

Reflecting on the visit, David, said:

“It was a privilege to share what we have learned in Aberdeen with the mining community in Queensland, and I came home having learned just as much in return. Many of the challenges these teams face are the ones I met early in my own career in offshore energy. Pausing to remember workers who did not make it home this year reminded everyone in the room why this work matters, and why sharing knowledge across industries and borders is so important.”