On 28 April 2026, the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) published the updated Critical Control Management: Good Practice Guide. It is the first significant overhaul of the document since the original 2015 release.

For Queensland mine operators, the timing is quite timely. The new guide arrives roughly five weeks before the 1 June 2026 deadline for sites to have critical controls in place for their identified Principal Hazards and/or Material Unwanted Events (MUEs).

This article explains what has changed in the guide, why those changes matter, and what officers and senior leaders should be doing about it before the deadline.

What's actually new

There are three substantive changes worth focusing on.

One document instead of two

The 2015 Good Practice Guide and the separate Implementation Guidance have been merged into a single 2026 edition. Pulling them together makes the document more usable as a working reference rather than a pair of standards on a shelf.

The new edition also incorporates lessons from a decade of ICMM member company implementation and review. That is significant. The guide is no longer a theoretical framework. It is a record of what has actually worked, and what hasn't, across the sector.

Stronger guidance on governance, accountability and leadership engagement

These three areas have been substantially expanded. They also happen to be the three areas where the 2022 Queensland CCM benchmarking work, presented by Peter Wilkinson, flagged the biggest gaps. Sites had identified critical controls. Many had even verified them. But governance was patchy, accountability was unclear, and leadership engagement was either missing or performative.

For officers under s47A of the Coal Mining Safety and Health Act, and s44A of the Mines and Quarries Safety and Health Act 1999, this is where the new guide is definitely worth your time. The accountability and leadership engagement sections speak directly to officer due diligence obligations. They describe what active engagement actually looks like, not what a board pack dashboard substitutes for it.

Maturity evaluations and operational readiness checks

This is the part of the update I find most useful. The guide now includes assessment tools that let an organisation test whether its CCM system is working in practice, not just whether it exists on paper.

The distinction matters. Plenty of sites have folders full of bowtie diagrams and verification schedules. Far fewer can demonstrate that those documents reflect what is actually happening on the shift today. The new tools force that question.

Why this matters five weeks out

If a Queensland mine is still designing its CCM system from scratch, the updated guide is a benchmark to test against, not a starter kit. Sites should already be well past initial design and into verification rhythm. If they are not, the priority now is getting the basics defensible by 1 June, then using the new guide to lift the system properly through the back half of 2026.

For officers and senior leaders, the position is different. The new guide is not optional reading. The accountability and leadership engagement chapters describe the conduct expected of someone meeting their officer obligations. Reading them gives officers a clear picture of what active engagement looks like. Not reading them, in my view, leaves an officer relying on others to tell them whether they are meeting obligations that sit with them personally.

A dashboard in a board report is not gaining an understanding. The new guide makes that distinction sharper than it has been.

The verification question

I have been putting one question to CMOs and SSEs for months. The new ICMM tools effectively put it back to officers as well.

Can you demonstrate, right now, that your critical controls for each principal hazard or MUE are specified, verified, and reported up and down the organisation?

Specified means the expected performance is defined. Verified means someone has checked the control is doing what it is supposed to do, against that defined performance. Reported up and down means the workforce knows the verification results, and so do the officers.

If the honest answer is yes on all three, a site is in good shape. If it is "not quite", the new guide and the 1 June deadline are now both pointing at the same thing.

How Mineplex can help: the CCM Diagnostic

This is exactly why Mineplex developed the CCM Diagnostic. It is an independent assessment of where a site's CCM system actually stands, measured against the new ICMM guidance and against the officer obligations under the CMSHA and QMSHA.

The diagnostic gives officers and senior leaders a clear, defensible read on:

• Whether the controls in place are genuinely critical, or whether they are broad management-system items being labelled as critical
• Whether expected performance is specified well enough for verification to mean anything
• Whether verification is measuring quality, or just volume
• Whether the reporting loop actually closes back to officers in a form that supports a timely response

It is built specifically for officers who want to know, before the deadline, what they are actually signing off on.

Final thought

Useful guidance is only useful if it gets used. The 2026 edition is a meaningful step up on the 2015 document. For Queensland mine operators, it lands at almost exactly the right moment to test the work that has been done over the past 12 months.

The window between now and 1 June is short. If you would like to talk through what good looks like in practice, or want a candid read on where your site stands, give me a call or send me a message.

Scott Graham

Founder and Managing Director, Mineplex 

0400 820 250 

sgraham@mineplex.com.au