A quarry inspection app should do four things well: work with no signal in the pit, carry your own inspection forms rather than a generic template, put every finding on a map of the site, and turn each inspection into the record your regulator expects to see. A quarry carries the same statutory inspection duties as a large mine with far fewer people, so the software has to save time in the field, not add a job in the office.
This guide covers the inspections a quarry actually runs, what the Queensland, NSW and WA regulations require of them, where paper and generic form apps fall short, and an eight-point test to put any quarry inspection software through before you sign.
The inspections a quarry actually runs
Most quarries run the same core set of inspections. Frequency and depth vary with the risk assessment, but the areas barely change from one pit to the next.
- Faces and benches. Loose material, overhangs, undercutting, tension cracks at the crest, seepage from the face and blast damage. The quarry face inspection checklist covers this in full.
- The pit as a whole. Floor condition, sumps, edge protection, access and the general working environment, usually done by the supervisor at the start of the shift. The NSW quarry pit inspection guide shows how the regulator frames it.
- Fixed plant and the crusher. Guarding, isolation points, walkways, conveyor condition and housekeeping around the primary and secondary circuits. See conveyor guarding at a quarry.
- Stockpiles and tip heads. Undercutting at the toe, windrows at the tip edge, dozer and loader interaction. See stockpile and tip head safety.
- Roads and vehicle operating areas. Surface condition, windrows, drainage, signage, intersections and the separation of light vehicles from haul traffic. The haul road inspection checklist sets out the items.
- Water. Ponds, dams, in-pit sumps, drainage paths and anything that could destabilise a face or a dump. See quarry water management and inrush.
- Mobile plant pre-starts. Daily checks on loaders, trucks, excavators and light vehicles before they go to work.
That is seven inspection types, often done by the same two or three people, and the app has to handle all of them as one system.
What the regulators expect
None of the three big quarrying states tells you which inspection form to use. All three require a planned, risk-based arrangement for regular inspections, carried out by competent people, and a record of what they found. That is the standard any software has to meet. For the wider picture across states and roles, see our guide to mine site inspections in Australia.
Queensland
Under section 95A of the Mining and Quarrying Safety and Health Regulation 2017, a supervisor’s responsibilities include carrying out inspections of workplaces as required under the mine’s safety and health management system, and recording the reports, findings and recommendations of those inspections in the mine record. The same regulation requires facilities such as a fence, barricade, bund wall or signage to minimise the risk of people falling into an excavation, and it defines an excavation to include a quarry face and pit.
Section 59 of the Mining and Quarrying Safety and Health Act 1999 requires the operator to keep that mine record, keep each matter in it for at least seven years, and make it available to workers, district workers’ representatives and the site senior executive. Quarry safety in Queensland covers the rest of the framework.
New South Wales
Section 39 of the Work Health and Safety (Mines and Petroleum Sites) Regulation 2022 requires the mine operator to have arrangements for the regular inspection of the working environment. The arrangements must take into account the procedures, when inspections are carried out, who is competent to do them and how many competent people are needed, and they must rest on a risk assessment of all areas of the mine.
The NSW Resources Regulator’s quarry and pit inspections presentation from its 2025 Small Mines Roadshow is worth reading before you choose software. It lists basic checklist prompts, then notes that many companies in the quarrying sector already use electronic pre-starts on phones or tablets that let them design their own inspection checklists, attach photos and send reports straight to the supervisor and quarry manager. It also points out that inspections recorded electronically with photographs help at shift handover, because the oncoming supervisor can see whether a condition has got worse. In other words, digital quarry inspections are already what the regulator expects to see. Quarry safety in NSW has the broader context.
Western Australia
Regulation 634A of the Work Health and Safety (Mines) Regulations 2022 requires arrangements for the regular inspection of workplaces. An inspection must cover the physical site, the work environment, the activities, the plant and potential hazards. It must be done by the statutory supervisor for the place or another competent person, and the arrangements must be based on a risk assessment and set out procedures, timing, competence and numbers. WorkSafe WA publishes mining self-assessments and a quarry systems audit guide, and our WA quarry inspection checklist puts those duties into field terms.
Where paper and generic apps fall short at a quarry
Paper works for a single inspection and fails at the system level. A carbon book in the crib room cannot tell the quarry manager that the same crest crack has been noted three shifts running, and nobody can search it when an inspector asks what was done about a seeping face last month.
Generic checklist apps solve the legibility problem and create new ones. The common failure modes at a quarry are:
- They stop working in the pit. Reception drops at the bottom of the pit and behind the crusher. An app that needs signal to open a form or save an answer gets abandoned, and the inspection goes back to the notebook.
- The form is somebody else’s. Downloaded templates are written for a warehouse or a construction site. They ask about fire extinguishers and miss tension cracks, blast damage and bunding at the crest.
- Findings float free of the ground. “Loose rock, north face” means something to the person who wrote it. To the next shift, or the regulator, it is an unanchored sentence. Location is one of the most important fields in a quarry inspection, and generic apps treat it as optional text.
- A finding ends at the finding. The form records a defect, then nothing tracks the control, who owns it or whether it was done. The inspection record looks complete while the hazard stays open.
- Per-user pricing punishes coverage. The moment you want every operator doing pre-starts in the app, the bill scales with headcount, so sites quietly limit who gets a login.
- Your forms can end up public. Some platforms encourage sharing templates in a public library. A quarry’s inspection forms reflect its hazards, its procedures and its layout. Most operators would rather keep them inside the business.
What to look for in quarry safety software
Use the failure modes as a specification. A quarry inspection app worth buying should pass each test in a pit, not a boardroom.
Fully offline, with sync
The whole inspection, including photos and sign-off, should complete with the device in flight mode and sync when it is back in reception. “Works offline” sometimes means “caches the last form you opened”, so watch it happen.
Your forms, with logic
You should be able to build the face, pit, plant and road inspections the way your safety and health management system describes them, not the way a vendor imagined them. Conditional logic matters: a “no” to “crest free of tension cracks” should open the follow-up questions and escalation steps, while a clean answer keeps the form short. Keep it short and specific. Our piece on why general checklists create a false sense of safety explains the trap.
Inspections on a map
A quarry is a place, and the inspection record should be too. Look for inspections that can be pinned to a location on the site map, attached to a specific hazard already on the map, or done without a map when location does not matter, such as a vehicle pre-start. Our guide to the inspection map for a mine site goes further.
Hazards and controls that carry on after the form
A finding should become a hazard with a location, photos and a status, and each control should have an accountable owner and a due date. That is the difference between recording a problem and managing one, and it is what the regulator will ask about.
Records and reports without retyping
The completed inspection should produce the record itself, with the completer’s sign-off and any countersignature, and reach the people who need it without someone retyping it into a spreadsheet. In Queensland that record feeds the mine record, where each matter must be kept for at least seven years, so ask how records are retained and how quickly you can find one.
Licensing that does not ration logins
Ask how the price scales. If it scales per user, work out the cost with every operator, contractor and casual included, because that is the only version where the system actually covers the site.
How HazView handles quarry inspections
The problem at most quarries is not a lack of inspections. It is that the face inspection lives in one book, the plant checks in another, the hazards on a whiteboard and the actions in somebody’s inbox, and none of it knows where on the site it happened. Answering an inspector’s question about one face takes a morning.
HazView puts the inspections, the hazards and the controls on one interactive map of the site that every role uses. Checklists complete fully offline in the app and sync when the device is back in reception. Forms are built to the site, with conditional logic so a non-conforming answer opens an escalation section, and existing paper forms are converted like for like before anything is improved. Each template can be pinned to a location, attached to a hazard on the map, or run with no map at all. Findings become hazards on the map with photos, status and full history, each control carries an accountable owner, a due date and a status, and a PDF record can be generated on submit and emailed to nominated recipients.
Two commercial points matter for a quarry. Licensing is enterprise pricing set to the site’s requirements, with one licence per statutory reporting area rather than per head. And each client runs its own dedicated deployment hosted in an Australian region, so your forms and records stay private and are never published to a public template library. See how it fits the quarry manager’s role on HazView for managers, or book a demo to test it in your own pit. For a broader comparison framework, read the mine inspection software buyer’s guide.
Quarry inspection app checklist
Take this to any vendor demonstration. Every row should be shown working, not described.
| Requirement | What good looks like | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Offline | Full inspection with photos and sign-off completed in flight mode, synced later | Needs signal to open a form or submit |
| Custom forms | Your face, pit, plant, stockpile, road and water inspections built to your SHMS | A template library you adapt around |
| Conditional logic | A failed check opens follow-up questions and an escalation path | Every question shown every time |
| Location | Inspections pinned to the map or attached to a hazard | Location typed as free text |
| Hazards and controls | Findings become hazards with owner, due date and status | Findings end as a line in a PDF |
| Records | Signed record produced on submit and sent to the right people | Records exported and retyped |
| Licensing | Priced to the site, every worker covered | Per-user cost that limits who gets a login |
| Data privacy | Forms and records kept in your own deployment | Forms shared to a public library |
Related guides
- Mine Site Inspections in Australia: What the Law Requires, What to Check and What a Defensible Record Looks Like
- Critical Control Verification Checklists That Prove the Control Works
- Digital TARPs: From Laminated Card to Live Trigger
- Tyre and Rim Inspection Checklist for Mining Equipment
- All Inspections & Checklists guides
Frequently asked questions
Does a quarry legally need an inspection app?
No. The regulations in Queensland, NSW and WA require a risk-based arrangement for regular inspections and a record of what was found, not any particular format. An app is simply a more reliable way to meet the record-keeping and follow-up parts of that duty.
Will a quarry inspection app work in the bottom of the pit?
Only if it is genuinely offline. Test it in flight mode at the lowest point of the pit, including photos and sign-off, then check that everything syncs when you return to reception.
Can we keep our existing inspection forms?
You should be able to. The safest approach is to convert the current forms like for like first, so crews recognise them, then improve them once they are in use. Avoid rewriting your inspection system and changing the tool in the same step.
Is quarry safety software different from mine safety software?
The inspection duties are largely the same, so a quarry safety app in Australia should be judged against the same regulations as mine software. In Queensland, the Mining and Quarrying Safety and Health Act 1999 defines a mine to include a quarry, and the WA mines regulations cover quarries and mines alike. The difference is scale: a quarry has fewer people doing more inspection types, so offline use, simple forms and licensing that covers everyone matter even more.
How should a quarry trial inspection software?
Run it alongside your current system for a few weeks on real inspections, not a demonstration dataset. Include at least one face inspection, one plant inspection and a round of pre-starts, and judge it on whether the supervisor would choose it over paper.