Quarry safety in Western Australia runs on the same legal framework as the biggest iron ore operation in the Pilbara. If you extract rock, sand, gravel, limestone or clay by excavating into a natural surface gradient, you are running a mine under the Work Health and Safety Act 2020 (WA) and the Work Health and Safety (Mines) Regulations 2022. That means a mine safety management system, principal mining hazard management plans, statutory position holders and incident reporting, whether you have 200 people or twelve.
This guide is the map. It walks through what a WA quarry has to have in place, what has changed recently, and where operators most often come unstuck. Each section links to a deeper article if you need the detail.
On this page
- Is your operation a mine under WA law?
- Who regulates quarries in WA now?
- The five things every WA quarry must have
- Where WA quarries most often come unstuck
- How WA compares to Queensland and NSW
- Making compliance visible instead of filed
Is your operation a mine under WA law?
Under the WHS (Mines) Regulations 2022, a quarry is a surface mining operation in which mineral, rock or soil is extracted from the earth by excavating into a natural surface gradient. The definition expressly picks up harvesting evaporites, strip mining, extraction of sand, clay and gravel, and hydraulic mining.
That is a wide net. A sand pit feeding a local concrete plant, a limestone quarry on the coastal plain and a hard rock aggregate operation are all mines for safety purposes. The obligations do not scale down because the operation is small. What scales is the level of detail expected in your documentation, which the regulator explicitly recognises should be appropriate to the complexity and risk of the mine.
Who regulates quarries in WA now?
This has moved twice in three years and it trips people up. The Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety became DEMIRS on 1 December 2023. From 1 July 2025 DEMIRS was reformed, with mining and petroleum going to the Department of Mines, Petroleum and Exploration, and industry regulation and safety moving to the Department of Local Government, Industry Regulation and Safety.
In practice, mine safety guidance, codes of practice, statutory certificates and the Safety Regulation System now sit under WorkSafe WA, with news and consultations published on SafetyLine. If you have old bookmarks pointing at dmp.wa.gov.au or dmirs.wa.gov.au, replace them. Inspectors have not changed, but the letterhead has.
The five things every WA quarry must have
1. A mine safety management system
Regulation 622 requires the mine operator to establish and implement a mine safety management system (MSMS). It is the framework that pulls your policies, procedures, risk assessments, statutory appointments and performance standards into one system covering the whole life of the operation, from planning through to closure.
An MSMS for a twelve-person quarry does not need to look like a tier one miner’s. It does need to be real, current, and usable by the people on site. A new mine must review its MSMS within twelve months of commencing operations, and every operation must complete a full review at least every three years. See building an MSMS for a small quarry.
2. Principal mining hazards identified, with a plan for each
Regulations 627 to 629 require you to identify every principal mining hazard at the mine and prepare a principal mining hazard management plan (PMHMP) for each one. A principal mining hazard is any activity, process, plant, substance or circumstance with a reasonable potential to cause fatalities, either in a single event or through recurring incidents.
For a typical quarry, the two that almost always apply are geotechnical instability and roads or other areas where mobile plant operate. Work through identifying principal mining hazards at a quarry, then writing the PMHMP.
3. The right statutory positions, filled by the right people
Schedule 26 prescribes the statutory positions at a mine. For quarries the key ones are the site senior executive, the quarry manager and statutory supervisors, plus a mine air quality officer where workers may be exposed to airborne contaminants, heat or humidity.
A quarry manager must be appointed where quarry operations are carried out and a levy is payable under the Mines Safety and Inspection Act 1994. Where no quarry manager is required, the site senior executive holds the quarry manager’s functions by default, which is a detail plenty of small operators miss. Read the quarry manager’s duties and appointment and statutory supervisors under Schedule 26.
4. Incident reporting that distinguishes notifiable from reportable
WA runs two streams. A notifiable incident under the WHS Act 2020 must be notified immediately. Anything that is not notifiable is then assessed against the 19 categories of reportable incident in the WHS (Mines) Regulations, which go into the Safety Regulation System and into your quarterly work health and safety report, due no later than 15 days after the end of each quarter.
Getting the classification wrong in either direction causes problems. See notifiable versus reportable incidents at a WA quarry.
5. A traffic management approach that matches the new code
On 4 August 2026 the WA Government published the Code of practice: Road and traffic management at Western Australian mines. It is an approved code under the WHS Act 2020, which means a court can accept it as evidence of what is reasonably practicable. This is the single biggest change to quarry compliance in WA this year.
Start with what the new road and traffic management code requires, then build or refresh your quarry traffic management plan.
Where WA quarries most often come unstuck
Across audits and inspections, the same handful of gaps come up.
- The MSMS exists but nobody uses it. A folder in the site office is not an implemented system. If a supervisor cannot find the control for the hazard they are standing next to, it is not implemented.
- PMHMPs copied from a template. A plan that describes someone else’s pit is worse than no plan, because it proves you did not assess your own site.
- Segregation that works on paper only. Light vehicles parking behind loaders, contractor trucks reversing near the weighbridge, and pedestrians crossing haul routes to get to the crib room.
- Face and batter inspections that are not recorded. The inspection happened, the geotech agreed, nobody wrote it down. See ground control at a quarry.
- No dust monitoring despite obvious silica exposure. Crushing and screening hard rock generates respirable crystalline silica. The exposure standard has been 0.05 mg/m3 since July 2020. See silica dust at WA quarries.
- Statutory appointments not accepted in writing. A verbal “you’re the supervisor on days” does not meet the requirement.
How WA compares to Queensland and NSW
If you have worked east coast, the concepts transfer but the vocabulary does not. Queensland runs recognised standards under the coal and the mining and quarrying Acts, with the site senior executive at the centre and prescriptive documents like Recognised Standard 19 for mine roads. NSW uses principal hazards and principal hazard management plans under the WHS (Mines and Petroleum Sites) legislation, explained in our guide to the principal hazard management plan.
WA sits closer to NSW in structure, with principal mining hazards and an overarching MSMS, but it uses codes of practice rather than recognised standards, and it has its own statutory certificate regime. The underlying risk is identical. Vehicle interaction is a fatality risk in every jurisdiction, which is why our guide to vehicle interaction as a principal hazard compares all three.
Making compliance visible instead of filed
The pattern behind most of the gaps above is the same: the paperwork is complete and the site does not reflect it. A hazard is recorded in a spreadsheet that the loader operator has never opened. A batter is flagged in an inspection report that lives in someone’s email.
Putting hazards, exclusion zones, road changes and inspection records on a shared map that everyone on site can see closes that gap directly. It also produces the evidence trail an inspector asks for, because every entry is located, timestamped and attributed. That is what HazView’s hazard management tools are built to do, and it is why critical controls fail when nobody can see them.
If you want to see how it would work on your pit, book a demo.
Guides in this series
Each guide below covers one part of this topic in depth.
- The Quarry Manager in WA: Duties, Appointment and When One Is Required
- How to Get a WA Quarry Manager’s Certificate of Competency
- Statutory Supervisors at a WA Quarry: Schedule 26 Explained
- Building a Mine Safety Management System for a Small Quarry
- Notifiable vs Reportable Incidents at a WA Quarry
- Principal Mining Hazards at a Quarry: How to Identify Them
- Writing a Principal Mining Hazard Management Plan for a Quarry
- Ground Control at a Quarry: Faces, Batters and the GCMP
- Silica Dust at WA Quarries: RCS Monitoring and the Air Quality Officer
- Quarry Inspections That Stand Up: Daily Checks, Records and Evidence
- Quarry Traffic Management Plan: What a WA Site Needs to Include
- Keeping Vehicles, Mobile Plant and People Apart at a Quarry
- Quarry Haul Road and Access Road Design: WA Standards Explained
- Speed Limits, Signage and Delineation at a Quarry
- WA’s Road and Traffic Management Code for Mines: What It Requires
HazView keeps this detail live on a site map rather than in a folder. Book a demo to see it against your own site.
Frequently asked questions
Do the WHS (Mines) Regulations 2022 apply to a small sand pit?
Yes. Extraction of sand, clay and gravel falls inside the definition of a quarry, and a quarry is a mine. The regulations apply, though the level of detail expected in your documentation should be appropriate to the size, complexity and risk of the operation.
Does every WA quarry need a quarry manager?
No. A quarry manager must be appointed where quarry operations are carried out at a mine and a levy is payable under the Mines Safety and Inspection Act 1994. Where a quarry manager is not required, the site senior executive holds the quarry manager’s functions.
What are the principal mining hazards at a quarry?
Most commonly geotechnical instability and roads or other areas where mobile plant operate. Fire or uncontrolled explosions and uncontrolled inrush of substances can also apply depending on the site. You must identify any others yourself.
Is the WA road and traffic management code mandatory?
It is an approved code of practice, not a regulation. You can comply another way, but you must achieve an equivalent or better standard, and the code is admissible in proceedings as evidence of what was reasonably practicable.
Who do I report a serious incident to in WA?
Notifiable incidents go to WorkSafe immediately. Reportable incidents are lodged through the Safety Regulation System and included in your quarterly work health and safety report, due within 15 days of the end of the quarter.