Lighting and Rigging Contractor Insurance

This is the structural question in event rigging and it is asked far too late far too often.

A rigging contractor arrives at a venue and uses points, beams, trusses or steelwork that somebody else installed, sometimes decades ago, for loads that were set for a different purpose. The venue may have a rigging plot and a stated capacity per point, or it may have a technical manager who believes a beam is fine because nothing has fallen yet. In a church, a listed hall, a marquee or a converted industrial building there may be no documentation at all. The contractor then hangs a modern production from it, which is heavier than anything the building has carried.

So the capacity question has to be answered before the first hoist goes up, and the answer has to be written down. Ask the venue for its rigging information and capacity per point, record what was provided and by whom, and where there is nothing, treat it as an unknown structure requiring assessment rather than assuming. On historic and unconventional buildings that may mean an engineer, and the cost of one is trivial against the alternative. Where a venue cannot or will not confirm capacity, rigging from the floor is the answer rather than hanging and hoping.

The thing that defines this trade's severity is that everything is above people, including small items.

A shackle, a bolt, a safety bond, a colour frame, a clamp, a tool or a cable tail falling from twelve metres onto a crowd causes serious injury, and a truss or a fixture coming down is a multi casualty event. The failure modes are familiar to every rigger: a clamp not tightened, a shackle not made off, a safety bond omitted because the hang was quick, a hoist chain not terminated properly, a point overloaded because the plot changed on the day, and a tool not tethered.

So the discipline is procedural and absolute. Secondary safeties on everything suspended as a rule rather than a habit, tool tethering at height without exception, a check of every hang by somebody other than the person who made it, a signed off plot before the room opens, and a rule that a change to the plot on the day goes back through the load calculation rather than being accommodated. Those checks are also what an investigation looks for, and a crew that can show a signed pre-show check is in a very different position from one relying on experience.

Temporary structures outdoors fail in one way more than any other, and it is not a rigging failure.

A stage roof, a screen, a tower, a PA wing or a banner is a sail. Wind loads rise sharply with speed, and a structure that is entirely safe at twenty miles an hour is not at forty. The recognised failures are a roof lifting, a tower going over, a screen folding, and ballast or anchoring that was adequate for the calculated load but not for the ground it was on after rain. The pressure not to act is enormous, because de-rigging or evacuating means a show does not happen and somebody loses a great deal of money.

So the wind management plan is the safety case, and it only works if somebody has authority to use it. Wind speeds measured on site rather than taken from a forecast, defined action levels with specified actions at each, a named person with authority to stop, agreement with the promoter in advance about who makes that call and that it will be respected, and ballast and anchoring designed for the actual ground condition. Insurers ask about this directly on outdoor work, and a contractor who has stopped a show before presents as a professional rather than a problem.

Across this sector the injuries concentrate at the end of the job rather than the beginning, and the reasons are the same every time.

A get-out happens late, after a show, with a crew who have already worked a long day, frequently in reduced lighting, with everybody wanting to be away and vehicles waiting. Equipment comes down faster than it went up, heavy items are moved on flat floors with crowds leaving, and corners get cut because the room has to be clear by a deadline. The injuries are falls, crush injuries from dropped or rolling equipment, manual handling, and vehicle incidents in a loading bay.

Which is why insurers focus on it. Realistic shift limits with a stated maximum rather than working until the truck is loaded, adequate lighting maintained for the get-out rather than switched to house lights, a rule that nothing comes down over an area that is not cleared, enough crew for the weight rather than enough to finish, and a loading bay procedure with a banksman. A company that can describe how it manages a 2am get-out is describing the part of its operation where the claims actually happen.

The venue's structure is the question. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.