Benchmark Your Mining Workforce Readiness Quiz

Compare Your Compliance Management Alongside Peers

Most mining contractors will tell you they’ve got compliance under control. They’ve got the documents. They track tickets. They get crews through the gate.

But then a shutdown ramps up. A principal contractor changes site requirements. A client asks for proof right now. And what looked like control turns out to be a system held together by one person’s memory, a spreadsheet, and hope.

If you can’t quickly prove who was compliant, for what site, on what day, you’re exposed—commercially and operationally. This isn’t legal advice. It’s practical risk reality.

This quiz benchmarks where your business actually sits. Not where you think it sits—where it sits when the pressure is on.

Where do you land?

High Compliance Risk (Firefighting) — 60%
Compliance is happening, but it’s fragile. Mobilisation depends on last‑minute checking. Costs rise through disruption. Risk spikes when requirements shift or proof is needed urgently.

Moderate Compliance Risk (Mostly covered) — 28%
Most things work most of the time—until they don’t. Add multiple sites, shutdown ramps, subcontractors, or a key person being away, and the cracks show. This is the friction‑tax zone: double handling, slow answers, late‑expiry panic, missed windows.

Low Compliance Risk (Controlled) — 12%
Readiness is visible and repeatable. Site rules are clear. Expiries are planned. Proof is easy to pull. Scheduling lines up with compliance. The business stays calm when scrutiny hits—and avoids roughly $50,000–$120,000/year in avoidable costs compared to the “mostly covered” band.

Take the quiz (2 minutes)

The hidden cost of “mostly fine”

Most people miss this: the biggest cost of workforce compliance isn’t the rare catastrophic failure. It’s the weekly friction that quietly eats margin.

It shows up as:

• Hours chasing documents that should already be filed
• Supervisors on the phone instead of on site
• Crews waiting for clearance while the clock runs
• Last-minute medicals booked at premium rates because no one saw the expiry coming
• Gate turnarounds that cost thousands in a single morning

For a contractor running 10–25 people, this friction typically costs $50,000–$120,000 per year. In shutdown-heavy years, it can push past six figures.

That’s not a compliance problem. That’s a profit problem.

And mining amplifies it. When equipment goes down unexpectedly, sites can lose tens of thousands per hour. Workforce readiness isn’t the only cause of delays—but when mobilisation is slow or uncertain, the operational hit is the same: lost hours, missed windows, and margin leakage.

The scrutiny problem (the part no one wants to deal with)

Mining work carries a different level of scrutiny than most industries. When something goes wrong—or an audit lands—the questions come fast:

Who was on site? What training did they have? When did their tickets expire? Can you prove it?

If your answer is “I think so” or “let me check a few places,” you’ve got a real problem, not a theoretical one.

The numbers back it up. A Queensland review cited by UNSW found 6 out of 7 recent mining fatalities involved contractors. Analysis cited by UNSW also noted 9 out of 10 high‑potential mining incidents involved contractors. And Safe Work Australia reported 139,000 serious workers’ compensation claims across all industries in 2022–23.

Contractors sit in the scrutiny zone. When incidents happen, when audits come, when clients ask for proof, the pressure lands hardest on the businesses that can’t produce clear records fast.

Many contracts include audit rights and record‑keeping obligations. Regulators expect evidence of competence and control. Insurance outcomes can hinge on documentation. And when a crew gets turned around at the gate because a requirement was missed—or couldn’t be proven quickly—the commercial damage is immediate.

This is why compliance isn’t paperwork. It’s proof. Proof that you knew who was ready, for what site, on what day.

What this quiz actually measures

Your answers roll up into six areas that separate contractors who are in control from contractors who are scrambling:

• One source of truth: Are tickets, inductions, medicals, and documents in one place—or scattered across emails, folders, and spreadsheets?
• Clear site requirements: Are the rules for each site written down and easy to check—or buried in someone’s inbox?
• Readiness visibility: Can you answer in under a minute who is site‑ready and available for Site X next Monday?
• Expiry runway: Do you plan 30, 60, 90 days out—or react when something expires?
• Subcontractor control: Do documents arrive clean and consistent—or create constant rework?
• Proof speed: When a client asks for evidence, can you pull it in minutes—or does it take hours?

Or start a GO Site Ready free trial today and get control back today.