Event Safety Insights Issue Four | Summer 2017 | Page 22

The financial temptation to have as few people on the tour as possible and have one person controlling multiple items (in this case it would be lighting control and motion con- trol) was something that was quickly elimi- nated from the production and it was clearly understood that safety came first. Our tour- ing Rigger and motion control operator was brought in for all of the shows to ensure that there was one person in control of the rig and one in control of the operation of the lighting. ESI to SM: What were a/some safety con- cern(s) that came up preliminarily? How did your team specifically address it/ them? SM: The selection of fixtures used was not purely one of how well the gear would rec- reate the design concepts, but reliability of the fixtures was also a primary concern. When the rig is put together it was import- 22 ant for us to test every element before the truss was lifted into the upright position. This is the point that you need to swap out any fixtures or cabling that may be problematic as the only other option is working at height which using a moving light rig can eliminate the need for, so ensuring that the equipment selected is reliable and well maintained is as important as what they can actually provide in terms of lighting effects. Having pre-rig truss with bases resolved a numbers of safety concerns that we over- came on a daily basis, from manual han- dling to unnecessary working at height. This solution did leave underlying potential prob- lems with regards to stability and height con- straints of the vertical truss. With the height of the upright truss it was impossible to have it loaded in the trucks in its entirety so the de- cision was taken to connect two lengths of truss when in the horizontal position and the point was added to the top of the truss. With