Quick Answer
QME stands for the Queensland Mining & Engineering Exhibition — a free, three-day trade expo held in Mackay for the mining and heavy engineering supply chain.
- What: Queensland Mining & Engineering Exhibition (QME)
- When: 21–23 July 2026
- Where: Mackay Showgrounds, Milton Street, Mackay QLD
- Cost: Free trade registration
- Who it's for: Mining contractors, maintenance and shutdown crews, field service and workshop teams, OEMs, engineers, procurement and safety leads.
Full details are on the official QME 2026 website.
What is QME?
QME — the Queensland Mining & Engineering Exhibition — is a biennial trade show held in Mackay, right in the heart of the Bowen Basin. It's been running since the 1980s and is widely considered Australia's largest regional mining event. If it's used on a Queensland mine site — trucks, drills, hoses, PPE, fatigue tech, contractor software, workshop tooling — chances are you'll see it at QME.
Unlike city-based conferences, QME is deliberately staged in the region so the people who actually turn spanners, run shutdowns and manage crews can walk the floor without flying to Brisbane or Sydney. That's what makes it so useful for contractors.
QME 2026 — key facts at a glance
Who attends the QME expo?
QME pulls in a very specific crowd — people who spend most of the year on-site, in workshops or coordinating crews across the Bowen and Galilee Basins. Typical attendees include:
- Mining contractors and subcontractors running crews for BHP, BMA, Anglo American, Glencore, Peabody, Whitehaven, Stanmore and Bravus.
- Maintenance, shutdown and turnaround teams.
- Field service and mobile mechanical businesses.
- Heavy vehicle and fixed-plant workshop managers.
- OEMs and dealers — Komatsu, Caterpillar / Hastings Deering, WesTrac, Liebherr, Epiroc, Sandvik.
- Engineering, fabrication and drilling contractors.
- Procurement, safety, compliance and training leads.
What to look for at QME 2026 if you manage field teams
It's easy to get lost in the shiny gear. If you run contractor crews across sites, the highest-value conversations at QME are usually the ones about the systems behind the work — not just the tools in your ute. Here's a shortlist worth walking the floor for.
Field service software built for mining
Generic tradie apps struggle with Tier-1 inductions, SMPs, pre-starts and shutdown paperwork. Look for platforms designed around mining compliance from day one.
Digital pre-starts & forms
Paper pre-starts get lost, damaged and delayed. See how digital JSAs, take-5s and hazard reports flow straight into a supervisor's dashboard.
Rostering & fatigue tools
FIFO / DIDO rosters, fatigue rules and shutdown ramp-ups need software that respects mining awards, not office 9-to-5 assumptions.
Workshop & asset management
Kiosks for the workshop, mobile access in the field, asset registers that survive an audit — check that all three talk to each other.
Tier-1 compliance & inductions
Ask exhibitors how they track site inductions, competencies, SWMS versioning and evidence for pre-qualification portals.
One system, not five
Jobs, timesheets, safety, quoting and invoicing bolted together with spreadsheets is a growth ceiling. Look for a single platform end-to-end.
