){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
Nine legal requirements, and most mines meet four: free Chapter 16 control room audits at Electra Mining
On 28 March 2025, Chapter 16 of the Mine Health and Safety Regulations was not amended. It was replaced in full, by Notice 6052 in Government Gazette No. 52388. It commenced the day it was gazetted, with no transition period. Regulation 16.5(1)(j) prescribes nine 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.
"Most rooms we walk into meet four or five of the nine," says Reghardt Rautenbach, Managing Director of Oculus Operational Innovations. "Not because anyone decided against the others. The emergency line went onto the same PABX as everything else and the distinct ring tone was never configured. The second communication system is a second handset on the same board, on the same power, leaving the building on the same fibre. Those are settings and design decisions, not procurement decisions."
Each audit runs for thirty minutes on the stand, against a printed scoring sheet, with two of the Oculus team present: the design side and the operations side. A control room fails on both axes. Visitors leave with a traffic-lighted score per requirement and receive a written Readiness Report five working days later, naming each gap and specifying each remedy.
Oculus has published the nine-point checklist free and ungated at chapter16.oculusoi.co.za, with no form and no email address required.
"Nothing in Chapter 16 obliges a mine to buy a screen," Rautenbach says. "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 of that is procedure, training and configuration. Several of the gaps we find cost nothing to close, and we would rather say so in thirty minutes than sell somebody something they do not need."
The company has attached a guarantee to the offer: if the panel cannot name three specific, actionable gaps within thirty minutes, it will tell the visitor the room is in good shape.
Oculus notes that the nine requirements of 16.5(1)(j) apply to underground mines. Surface operations fall under regulation 16.5(7)(iii), which requires every surface mining operation to contract a mines rescue service provider to run a control room management course and issue a certificate renewable every three years, and potentially under regulations 16.7(2) and 16.7(3) covering missing person locator devices.
Oculus Operational Innovations designs, engineers, fabricates and fits out control rooms for mining, energy and manufacturing. Its work includes the Integrated Remote Operations Centre at Assmang Black Rock, where 21 operator stations and 84 screens bring three shafts into a single view, and Africa's first fully redundant 0,7 mm pixel-pitch micro-LED command centre wall at Red Rocket.
Slots can be booked at chapter16.oculusoi.co.za/audit. Four audits a day, five days. Stand F04, Hall 4, 7 to 11 September 2026, Johannesburg Expo Centre, Nasrec.
Ends
Media contact: Reghardt Rautenbach, Managing Director, Oculus Operational Innovations. reghardtr@oculusinnovations.co.za, +27 83 283 5566.
)
){kind=logo}
)
){kind=logo}
)
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
)
)
)
){kind=logo}
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
)
)
)
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
)
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
)
)
)
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
)
){kind=logo}
)
)
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
){kind=logo}
)
)
)
