Safety mad or the right way to go?

[MartinGreen]

I write this thread following a 3 hour meeting trying to explain to a client why a double braked motor on its own will not give him any additional safety whatsoever in his installation, so excuse me if the tone of this post is a little exasperated :D

 

I have my ear to the ground for any safety news and any incidents and try my best to be a conciencious supplier of the right equipment as well as a conciensious employer. But I cannot help but question some of the things I see and read these days. It seems fact has been replaced by fear and to a point I understand that but there comes a time when reason and commonsense has to take control over having ridiculously unuseable equipment because it is way over engineered.

 

I hear of safety factors being increased on lifting equipment when it is already big enough to withstand what any intelligent person can or will throw at it and then some. I hear double brakes being pioneered when actually they add absolutely nothing to the safety of an installation (see start of my thread). I see safetys being added to almost every product that hangs in the air (chain bags been the latest offering) and yet I am yet to see anything fall from the sky because it has been anything other than either abused to death or badly maintained (or both). I do not include light & sound in this because that is not my business. My business is motors, steels, chains and general equipment.

 

Don't get me wrong, it is in my companies interest that people safety the hell out of everything with wire, chain, shackles and just about anything else they fancy, but I cannot help feeling that the money being spent on double this and 10:1 that is actually just money that should be invested in the correct training and correct use of the standard equipment. Are we actually factoring out incompetance or are we really making our industry safer?

 

I ask mainly because I origionally come from an industry that used cranes that lifted 100t + of molten steel and winches that could rip a coal seam out virtually on their own (Air winches are the most powerful things I have ever seen) and yet they never "secondary safetied" anything or added another brake for the hell of it. But the main difference is that the people who operate the equipment are trained to (in the main). Crane drivers go on courses to drive cranes and hoist users are shown how to correctly use hoists. If they can do it, where are we so different? Why is 5:1 not enough when it comes to safety factors?

 

Am I the only one where the most simple of installations (ask Bryson about this one) have become ridiculously complicated because someone stuck an oar in where it was neither needed or wanted.

 

I am sure this will annoy and upset some but this is not what I am trying to do. I am just trying to stimulate a debate to arrest the runaway vehicle that is safety over common sense.

 

What do the rest of us think? Am I blowing out the back of my head (it wouldn't be the first or the last time) or am I striking a cord with what others are thinking?

[paulears]

I suspect the truth may well be that many of the people concerned with specifying and accepting equipment installations don't themselves have any real knowledge of the real work that is carried out. As a result the err on the side of caution, and err a great deal. I'm not a skilled rigger - and when faced with a decision where I'm pretty certain plan A will suffice, the small doubt leads me to an over specified plan B.

 

I work sometimes with a company who do television studios, theatre spaces and testing and repair of all kinds of lifting kit. The two enigineers responsible for the work they do often tell me tales of crazy over specified plant they find. In my own venue, we have a couple of front of house bars, over the audience - previously on 3 drum manual winches. As part of the recent replacement of all steel wire rope they replaced the 3 drum winches with single drum versions and the 3 drop cables connected via a clew plate to a single cable. Me - I asked about the safety aspect of just a single cable - using the secondary suspension 'requirement' we all seem to bang on about. They patiently explained that the single cable was perfectly up to the task, with a sensible safety ratio. They then explained how in this particular installation the real weak link was the bolts holding the winches and pulleys - the shear strength info went a little over my head, but I got the idea. Now, if I'd decided to do the job myself, I'd have over specified the winch, probably used a size above the cable they used and fitted some kind of safety system to the bars. Then I'd have been happy. The people we used were very happy to issue the appropriate certificates once their design was in place and tested.

 

The case in question where double brakes are the issue just sum this up. The people requesting things are not engineers - if they were, the problem would go away. While non-engineering people have a say in safety, these things carry on.

 

In the past few months we've seen a huge demand for towers - people seem to be buying the things all over the place. The workers get trained by a staff member who went on a one day course run by people who had been on a three day course. The subject of competence is a joke. I watched 6 people attempting to put the brand new tower together. They got the angle of dangle wrong and a section jammed - so they used hammer to un-jam it, putting huge dents in the tube. The danger this lot were subject to putting the damn thing up were infinitely worse than the danger in using it!

[Andrew C]

... If they can do it, where are we so different? Why is 5:1 not enough when it comes to safety factors?...

Oh, hear hear!! If 5:1 is good enough for genuinely risky industries, why the h3ll do we work to 8:1? Is it because the turns are so much more valuable than a steelworker or miner?

[dbuckley]

If 5:1 is good enough for genuinely risky industries, why the h3ll do we work to 8:1? Is it because the turns are so much more valuable than a steelworker or miner?

Yep - members of public are more valuable then a coworker wearing a hard hat, used to working in a scary place where things do go wrong - would be my guess.

[Stutwo]

Don't forget the compensation culture we live in. Anything that goes over or near a member of the public is potentially an enormous expense were anything to go wrong. It's this more than anything else, in my opinion, that has forced the overspeccing of backups and safety factors.

 

If only we could get away from the "No win No Fee" arrangements and start putting some responsibility back onto people themselves, but I can't see that happening anytime soon.

[lightsource]

To be general, we also have to remember that we are a 'claims culture' society nowadays. Various TV channels ram them down your throat "have you suffered an accident in the past xx years" and this makes a lot of people, myself included very wary in some situations.

 

Unlike theatre I do live work that can include vast amounts if intoxicated apes (drunken students). You turn up to a college building, the electrician jumps on you from behind for the pat certificates, the H&S guy won't lend you their ladders 'cause they're not insured if you fall off ( so stood on speaker cabs instead) then, when they bugg3r off, you get 500 p155ed students in a room with fire regs for 300, alcohol flying out of glasses like a water hose spraying everywhere, and jumping and climbing onto anything they can to make them taller - all of this covered by one 20 year old 5 stone security guard, standing at the back (oh and I forgot lit cigarette stubs flicked onto the floor, or wherever they land). Now, going back to the OP's comments, I think the pat test and the ladders are the LEAST of the college's problems but they have covered their arses and removed the 'blame' from themselves should any 'claim' arise.

 

I think that the expression 'training and qualifications' is far too relied on. What are one day courses actually worth? you could probably gain more information from the internet, from people who actually do the job, rather than some 'service provider' company who does a pyro course in the morning then anger management for a different class in the afternoon, delivered by tutors that have never worked in the industry they are lecturing on ( that was a generalisation no offence intended :) ) Take a look at riggers, probably one of the most dangerous jobs in our industry, how could a service provider adequately 'train a rigger' to do a large festival?

 

Look at the manual handling half day course, this course can mainly be summed up by "use your legs not your back" or "distribute your load evenly", but it is more of a cop out for employers when you injure your back, I have seen many people who have done this course and not implemented what they have been taught, ie bending over to lift a heavy object, but the employer is now better covered should that claim arise.

 

Health and safety is mostly driven by the claims culture, and this is only going to get worse in time. 10 years ago I would have never imagined I would have £5 million Public liability insurance, and some venues want £10. In 20 years time it'll brobably be £100 million!

 

Anyway end of rant, have some work to do. I need to change some par lamps, I will be using ladders ( with the relevant BS certificate), bolted down with 4x M20 bolts into a concrete floor, (the bolts X-ray'd and certified by a structural engineer). Once I am 1m up the ladder, I will attach a safety harness, with a secondary wire, .......you get the point :(

 

Sorry Stutwo, started writing this at 10:30 and missed your post I totally agree with what you say, and a lot of what is in my first post relates to being in court.

 

Which side presents the best case

 

Claimant "I've injured my back"

Defendant "We put him on a manual handling course, so he should have known what he was doing"

 

 

 

Judge (possibly) "no case to answer"

[Modge]

Surely anyone dumb enough to overload something that has got a safety factor of 5:1 can also manage 8:1?

This surely is the problem - machines do the jobs clearly intended for the stupid, so the stupid do something else. I'm with Andrew C's .sig on the solution to that one.

 

Chris

(Who has just finished dealing with a mighty retarded user and is not feeling massive enamoured with the stupid right now)

[Pete McCrea]

As Jimmy Carr said recently- The Gene Pool might benefit from a little bit of chlorine every now and then.

[Droycewalker]

Well, here we go... My first post, and what a debate to throw myself into....

 

Whilst I do have some empathy with the sentiment of the OP, surely we are all just conforming to the strictures and guidelines (LOLER, PUWER, et al.) put in place by people much further up the tree than our branch (I don't know about you, but I wasn't personally invited to input at the development stage of those beloved regs....)? I agree, the factors of safety are massively over-specced, but that's what we are required to achieve. And what's so wrong with being 110% confident in your design/installation, hence 8:1 rather than 5:1?

 

Another difference (and I'm sure Martin will correct me if I am reading his OP wrong...) but the vast majority of suspensions and points we deal with are temporary, not the sort of more permanently installed systems found in heavy industry. Temporary suspensions - secondary safeties; it's there in LOLER, in black and white. No longer the "just on the front truss" approach of yesteryear.

 

We do live in a litigious society, and we can all feel the HSE breathing down our necks so, if they came knocking on my door, I would like to think that I have fulfilled every letter and requirement of their, sometimes, stupefying rules and regulations....

 

But, hell, that's just my opinion....

[Tim_C]

Well, to chuck my two-penneth into this debate, I'd have to say that whilst HSE is all well and good, it can get in the way. In the entertainments industry (as we all well know), you do sometimes have to do tasks that could described as risky and probably not conforming to the HSE regs (standing near the top of a set of 14-rung zarges without a harness on in a fully-lined marquee springs to mind).

 

I'm all for people being safe when it comes to rigging things and working, but not if it makes the job harder than it needs to be. For example, I recently (within the last month or so) put in a corporate event in a council venue where they require full loading plans for the points and complete Method Statements, Risk Assessments, etc. A lot of trees felled for paperwork that should really have just been a simple 'my crew and I know what we're doing in there and have worked out that it'll be well within your safety boundaries'. The venue is a very familiar one, and they're very familiar with us. The thing is, they insist on having this documentation 2 weeks before a gig is due to be rigged. Problem is, we don't always receive confirmation of the gig until sometimes only 3 days beforehand. I pointed this out, and they said it didn't matter, as long as we got the paperwork to them at least a couple of hours before the gig was due to load in. So what's the point in stating on the letter it needs to be in 2 weeks beforehand??!?!?!?! :)

 

Gig went in, motors had only recently been re-certified by LOLER regs (we use an independent inspector to test our stuff, obviously), so in theory we could have run the truss up to height, unplugged the socas from the motor controller and all would have been well, as we were hanging a max of 150kg off 0.5T lodestars. But, we had to spend several hours faffing around putting in secondary safeties, which, stupidly enough, could only be rigged off the same point as the main rig. So no real secondary safety, and not much point to them (excuse the pun). This was time we didn't have to spare (not because of poor crew timing, but purely because of council regulated access times).

 

What's the point I'm making after this small diatribe? If safety means that you over-complicate a job to such a degree that it does not become safe for the crew who are trying to make it safe for the punters, then what's the point? If the main kit you're using to do the job can do the job well enough without the safeties, and is in itself safe enough to just leave hanging, why do we have to spend time we never seem to have putting an office manager's mind at ease? Surely the certification that the main kit can do the job and be safe without the need for secondary safeties is enough?

 

But we are in a point-the-finger culture, where responsibility must lie with SOMEONE that can be sued for mal-practise or something if it goes wrong. So, we have to put in secondary safeties. Well, most of the time anyway. In a curious turn of events, rigging a piece of pipe with a bar of pinspots on it in one venue doesn't need safeties (it seems), whereas a piece of slick (say) with the same bar of pinspots on it in the same place does... Go figure.

 

Tim

 

P.S. With the whole safety thing in mind, one venue I have to frequent refuses to let you use a picker unless you clip yourself to the picker at all times. Is it just me who thinks that a wee bit daft? I'd much rather take the picker up to height and safety myself to a load-bearing beam or some such in the roof of the venue so if the picker decides to fall over and die then at least I'm not going with it and possibly killing myself.

[GRisdale]

P.S. With the whole safety thing in mind, one venue I have to frequent refuses to let you use a picker unless you clip yourself to the picker at all times. Is it just me who thinks that a wee bit daft? I'd much rather take the picker up to height and safety myself to a load-bearing beam or some such in the roof of the venue so if the picker decides to fall over and die then at least I'm not going with it and possibly killing myself.

 

Not that I'm an expert or anywhere near, but I would suggest that: 1. Your method does not protect you while ascending or descending. 2. The most likely time for the picker to "fall over" is whilst moving, when you'll have to detach your safety from that load-bearing beam to move to your next place of work. 3. If there isn't a load bearing beam where you happen to be...? 4. Safetying to the picker rather than the roof will allow your to work far more quickly as you won't need to attach/detach yourself continually (though that maybe just me thinking about my own situation as I'm most likely to be focusing conventionals and wanting to move around a lot...) 5. The most likely cause of a fall would logically be when leaning out over the guard rail because you can just... about... reach.. that... without moving the picker a bit only to move it back again. If you're safetied into the basket so that you can't lean out far enough to fall you won't... fall. Preferable to a long drop and a sudden stop.

 

I would second your frustrations on those times where 'Health and Safety' makes things more difficult, conceivably less-safe, or just more long winded - death by fatigue anyone? But as is the answer to many a question (like: "Why does the manual for my oven need to point out that you shouldn't use the open door as a step ladder?")

 

It's the price we pay for living amongst idiots.

 

Every village has one. Here in Bedford we're evidently above average...

[dbuckley]

But, we had to spend several hours faffing around putting in secondary safeties, which, stupidly enough, could only be rigged off the same point as the main rig. So no real secondary safety, and not much point to them (excuse the pun).

This type of scenario is one that is beginning to bug me a lot.

 

Usual disclaimer - I not a rigger, just an observer of things rigged.

 

As my mind sees it, the idea of a secondary support or safety is to ensure that stuff doesnt fall down when something (presumably the "primary suspension") breaks. Further than that, the safety is protect aginst the failure of a single point of failure, one thing that if it goes on it's own, bad things happen. So I've very comfortable demanding a safety on a lantern, 'cos almost universally the lantern is held up by a hook clamp, which goes to the lantern yoke using a single bolt. In the (albeit unlikely) of a hook clamp or that bolt failing, the safety will catch the lantern. The yoke is usually attached to the lantern with two bolts, one on each side, and the chances of both bolts failing simultaneously to cause the lantern to fall must be vanishingly small.

 

Now if you've got a video screen held up by three motors, for the screen to come down either ths supports for all three motors have to come unglued simultaneously, or the three motors need to disintegrate simultaneously. So it seem intuitive that an additional safety is not required, as with any single failure there is enough redundancy in the complete mechanism to prevent catastrophic failure.

 

Same with a square of truss truss, 8 motors corners and centres, a system that looks inherently redundent.

 

The one I though was really odd was the chain bag mentioned recently. I'd have thought the answer was obvious; if a single failure could cause bag and chain to come down then more redundancy is needed. So one wire between two bag eyes looped over the truss wont cut it, whereas two or more wires up to the truss would. A stitch or two coming out isnt going to cause the bag to immediately fail.

 

Am I mad, or is there something I'm missing...?

[Roderick]

paperwork that should really have just been a simple 'my crew and I know what we're doing in there and have worked out that it'll be well within your safety boundaries'.

And this is the attitude that makes the implementation of sensible OH&S so painful!

It contradicts itself, if you have worked out how to do it safely, why not share that knowledge with the venue, and then gives a few samples that show that you don't actually know what you are doing.

 

1- Secondary safeties on motors: Have you ever read the labels on your chainmotors? There will be a warning, if it hasn't been painted over, that will state: Not to be used to suspend loads above people. That is why you put in a safety. The chance of the rigging point failing is minimal, the chance of the motor failing is real. Had you done your homework you would have recognised that.

Which leads to the next point: Finding sensible solutions. I fully agree with dbuckley that you can find redundancy in most rigs and if you had applied that logic you wouldn't have had to spend time putting in additional safeties. Simple example: Truss on two motors - one motor fails and as a result that side will fall down - Big risk! Same truss on three motors - one motor fails but even if it is a motor at the end of the truss, the other two will keep it up long enough to take measures to bring it down safely, if you made sure the total weight of the truss can be supported by the two remaining motors.

And that is why venues would like to see your RA two weeks before so that they can review your safety measures and comment, that will avoid 'over the top' measures based on a lack of information.

Finding sensible solutions is all based on dialogue - the old art of sharing ideas and arriving at a sensible solution.

 

2- If you don't understand why you should be clipped onto the bucket of the picker / boomlift at all times I would have serious doubts if you are a competent person to operate that piece of machinery. I would also suggest that you probably use the wrong lanyard when working from a boomlift, it should be a restrictive lanyard that prevents you from falling out of the bucket, if it is long enough to reach above you to attach to an overhead beam, it is too long! The longer fall-arrest lanyards should only be used when working on a fixed structure and attached to a fixed point or static line.

 

 

My apologies if I upset people but this whole 'I know what I am doing so don't ask me to explain' attitude is driving me mad. And in most cases it is that attitude that triggers knee-jerk reactions from venues or authorities creating unworkable situations. If you know what you are doing, share that knowledge and put everyone's mind to rest. That is what OH&S is all about, making sure everyone has done everything reasonably possible to maintain a safe workplace.

[mumbles]

I fully agree with dbuckley that you can find redundancy in most rigs and if you had applied that logic you wouldn't have had to spend time putting in additional safeties. Simple example: Truss on two motors - one motor fails and as a result that side will fall down - Big risk! Same truss on three motors - one motor fails but even if it is a motor at the end of the truss, the other two will keep it up long enough to take measures to bring it down safely, if you made sure the total weight of the truss can be supported by the two remaining motors.

I do get the feeling here that although, as you say, there is enough redundancy in the system to cope with the failure, you've overlooked the degree of redundancy.

 

For example, you have a 10 metre length of truss, with say 10 30kg movers hanging, 1 every metre, but then with a screen at on end. This would amount to a total load over the lifting points of about 550kgs, so well within two lodestars etc, and with a span and loading that would be okay to hang the truss over just 2 points. If as you suggest, a third point is included, where would it go?

Because of the un symmetrical loading, one end of the truss could quite easily accelerate downwards (slowly admittedly), if the motor at the heavier end failed. Although this can quite easily be designed out of the system by placing correctly to reduce the moment about this point to zero, this could quite easily be ruined by someone coming along and laying the cables along the to a in a different way to that assumed. In this case, the failure of the motor would lead to the possibilty of a serious accident, whereas putting a safety on would eliminate this.

 

Based on the start of your post, the motor is much more likely to be the bit to fail than the chain, so either a truly secondary safety, or a motor bypass safety would be much more appropriate, because it gives a redundancy at each point, as opposed to just ensuring a redundancy to the whole system.

 

Please note, I'm in no way trained as a rigger, and these musings are based on a mix of GCSE physics and a civil engineering degree course, so shouldn't be taken as advice.

[Roderick]

Because of the un symmetrical loading, one end of the truss could quite easily accelerate downwards (slowly admittedly), if the motor at the heavier end failed. Although this can quite easily be designed out of the system by placing correctly to reduce the moment about this point to zero, this could quite easily be ruined by someone coming along and laying the cables along the to a in a different way to that assumed. In this case, the failure of the motor would lead to the possibilty of a serious accident, whereas putting a safety on would eliminate this.

 

Based on the start of your post, the motor is much more likely to be the bit to fail than the chain, so either a truly secondary safety, or a motor bypass safety would be much more appropriate, because it gives a redundancy at each point, as opposed to just ensuring a redundancy to the whole system.

 

Point taken and I fully agree. I merely tried to give a simple example that most risks can be reduced or eliminated with some thought. It is the thought process I am interested in and you picked up on that. In your example you looked at all the factors and concluded that a third point would not eliminate the risk sufficiently and that a secondary safety or motor by-pass would be required. Having gone through that process it now becomes clear why these additional things should be in place and they are no longer 'over the top' requests.

 

Risk assessment is a very simple and basic process and, when taken seriously, will show quite quickly what you need to do to keep things safe. Understanding why things need to be done certain ways will always make then look less ridiculous than initially thought.