Stephenson, RM & Moulding, CR 2026, 'Industry benchmarks for ground support quality assurance/quality control practices', in D Cumming-Potvin & J Wesseloo (eds), Ground Support 2026: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Ground Support in Mining, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth, pp. 1-12, https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_repo/2625_24
(https://papers.acg.uwa.edu.au/p/2625_24_Stephenson/)
Abstract: Quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) is key to achieving the support’s intended performance. Significant effort can be spent on support design, but if the design is not well implemented, much of this effort is undermined, and the design Factor of Safety should be increased potentially leading to conservative designs. Quality assurance is ensuring that a task is adequately completed, preventing poor quality. Quality control is a validation to detect poor quality.
There are 3 major components to QA/QC which are before, during, and post-installation. All 3 are critical to the implementation of geotechnical designs at any underground operation. QA/QC programs are typically designed with consideration to the key issues with each type of support element, testing frequency, acceptance criteria, and reporting of the results.
Global industry benchmarking data for test types, frequency, acceptance criteria, among other aspects, were compiled from recent ground control management plans from various underground operations around the world. These are presented to assist operations in the design or review of the ground support QA/QC programme, consistent with established industry practice.

Keywords: quality assurance, quality control, QA/QC, ground support, Benchmarking