MHSA Chapter 16 · Gazetted 28 March 2025

Does your emergency control room meet the law?

On 28 March 2025 the regulations changed. They now set nine minimum requirements for an underground mine's emergency control room. Most of the mines we walk into meet four.

Chapter 16 of the Mine Health and Safety Regulations was not amended. It was replaced in full, by Notice 6052, Government Gazette No. 52388. It commenced the day it was gazetted, with no transition period.

Regulation 16.5(1)(j) now prescribes minimum requirements for the emergency control room itself, and names the holder of the Mine Manager's certificate as the person who must control that room at all times.

Download the nine-point checklist (PDF, 1 page)

No form. No email address. Nothing to fill in.

Worth saying plainly, since it costs us work

Nothing in Chapter 16 obliges you to buy a screen. It obliges you to be able to run a rescue from a room, under a certificated manager, with two independent communication paths and a defensible log, at 02:00, in the dark, with families gathering at the gate.

Most rooms cannot. That is a design problem, not a procurement problem. You should be able to assess your own control room without paying anyone, us included, which is why the checklist above is free and ungated.

The nine requirements

These sit under regulation 16.5(1), which opens: "The employer at every underground mine must—".

  1. An up-to-date ventilation and rescue plan for any affected area.Is it current, and is it physically in the room?
  2. A communication system to the potential fresh air base.When was it last tested, end to end?
  3. A second communication system, independent of the first, to outside parties.Same PABX is not independent. Same power is not independent.
  4. An emergency line with a distinct ring tone.Could your controller tell, without looking up, that this is the call that matters?
  5. The room under the control, at all times, of a Mine Manager's certificate holder.Who is that at 02:00 on a Sunday? When does their certificate expire?
  6. An appointed person recording all sequence of events and instructions.What would that room hand an inquiry eighteen months later?
  7. Relevant area personnel available for consultation.Reachable, or in the room?
  8. A written hazard and mitigation list issued before operations commence.Pre-compiled, or written during the incident?
  9. Only authorised, directly involved persons present.Who tells the executives to wait outside?

Regulation 16.7 adds an obligation that lands in the same room: a missing person locator device on every person underground, with a data logging facility. Under 16.5(2)(j), the control room management certificate must be renewed every three years.

Running an open pit? Those nine are not yours. Regulation 16.5(1)(j) applies to underground mines only.

You are not outside Chapter 16 though. Regulation 16.5(7)(iii) requires every surface mining operation to contract a mines rescue service provider to run a control room management course and issue a certificate, also renewable every three years. Regulations 16.7(2) and 16.7(3) require missing person locators where your risk assessment shows a significant risk of engulfment, slope failure, or uncontrolled flow of water, mud or slimes.

Worth checking whose name is on that certificate at your operation, and when it expires.

The 30-minute Control Room Readiness Audit

At Electra Mining we are auditing twenty mines' emergency control rooms against all nine requirements, plus the ISO 11064 criteria that decide whether operators can actually work in there for twelve hours. Free, and you leave with a score.

Five working days later you receive a written Readiness Report. Traffic-lighted per requirement, each gap named, each remedy specified.

Every audit is run by two of our heads of department, design and operations, because a control room fails on both axes and you should hear both arguments in the same half hour.

On the stand we are running a live operator console, designed and built by us, driving a video wall on VuWall PAK KVM over IP managed in TRx. You can take keyboard and mouse control of a source from the operator station or off the wall. Come and drive it, not look at it.

ELECTRA MINING AFRICA · 7–11 SEPTEMBER 2026
HALL 4 · STAND F04

Our guarantee: if we cannot name three specific, actionable gaps in thirty minutes, we will tell you your room is in good shape and you will have lost half an hour. There is no pitch in that room.

Book one of the 20 slots

How we know

One View of the Value Chain: Assmang Black Rock iROC21 operator stations, 84 panels, three shafts brought into one view. The longest continuous TBC SmartTrac console built to date and the largest SDVoE AV-over-IP video wall deployed in industry.
People First, Then Pixels: human-centred control room designWhy control rooms fail, and it is almost never the technology. Proven on Africa's first fully redundant 0,7 mm pixel-pitch micro-LED wall at Red Rocket's Command Centre.
One Blueprint, Every Brewery: a repeatable command hub standardOne 65-page blueprint and construction specification, written in 2020, which has since framed thirty-plus commissioned projects across a global brewing group's sites and markets.
Email Reghardt directly

Or call +27 83 283 5566. If you want a slot at a specific time, say so and we will hold it.