AusIMM International Mine Health & Safety Conference 2026: Dates, PD Hours and What Contractors Need to Know

It is AusIMM's premier health and safety technical conference, bringing together executives, site managers, supervisors, operators, HSE professionals and regulators to work on the risks that are still killing and harming people on mine sites. Unlike a trade show, it is a technical conference: peer-reviewed papers, keynotes and discussion groups, with an eBook of proceedings and on-demand content included in registration. The 2026 edition uses the hashtag #IMHS2026.

The International Mine Health and Safety Conference 2026 runs Monday 5 to Wednesday 7 October 2026 at the Pan Pacific Perth, 207 Adelaide Terrace, Perth WA 6000. The venue sits in the CBD near the Swan River, roughly a 20-minute transfer from Perth domestic and international terminals, with AusIMM-negotiated rates at nearby 4 and 5-star hotels. Early bird registrations are open.

The conference is worth 24 professional development (PD) hours. That matters if you hold AusIMM Chartered Professional status or if your clients require documented competency and CPD evidence for supervisors and HSE leads. Three days at IMHS covers a large share of an annual PD requirement in one trip — and it is a defensible line item when you are justifying travel spend.

AusIMM is framing 2026 as a defining moment: despite decades of effort, serious risks to both physical safety and psychosocial health persist and lives are still being lost at an unacceptable rate. The program pushes past intent into accountability and decisive action. Expect strong coverage of psychosocial hazards, respect-at-work obligations, fatigue, critical risk management, and the gap between a documented system and what actually happens on shift.

AusIMM runs tiered pricing: full delegate, author, Fellow / Chartered Professional, new professional (0-5 years in the industry) and student rates, each with member and non-member pricing, plus a day access option. Non-members can bundle an Associate membership with registration and typically come out ahead. Registration includes all technical sessions and Q&A, on-demand content after the event, the eBook of proceedings, exhibition access, the conference app meeting hub, catering and networking functions on the exhibition floor.

Contractors carry a disproportionate share of the industry's exposure — you supply the crews doing shutdowns, maintenance, isolation work and confined-space entries. Your clients' HSE leads are in this room, and their expectations for contractor safety performance get shaped here before they land in your next prequalification questionnaire. Attending puts you a cycle ahead: you hear what a Tier-1 principal is about to require rather than discovering it in a tender clause.

Bring your current safety statistics (TRIFR, LTIFR, high-potential incident rate and, importantly, your leading indicators), evidence of how you manage competency, training currency, licences and medicals, and your critical risk controls for the scopes you actually deliver. When a client HSE manager asks how you verify that the fitter on shift held a current ticket, the answer should be a system you can show, not a spreadsheet you promise to update.

Use the conference app meeting hub to line up conversations before you fly. Pick sessions by risk domain rather than by speaker name — one session that reframes how you manage isolation or fatigue pays for the trip. Take notes against a specific action list for your own system, and set a 30-day deadline to implement two of them. Perth also puts you close to WA operators; if you service the Pilbara or Goldfields, add site meetings either side of the conference.

IMHS 2026 (5-7 October, Perth) sits between the Queensland Mining Industry Health & Safety Conference (16-19 August, Gold Coast) and the NSW Mining HSEC Conference, with IMARC (27-29 October, ICC Sydney) closing the year. It also lands days after the AusIMM New Leaders Summit (30 September - 1 October, Brisbane) and just before Mill Operators 2026 (19-21 October, Brisbane). If you run a national safety function, IMHS is the technical one; QMIHSC and NSW HSEC are the state-regulator-facing ones.