Rigging Awareness

Introduction

If you work in AV, you work under rigging. The PA over the stage, the lighting truss above the front rows, the LED wall behind the presenter and the projector bridge in the ballroom ceiling are all hanging there because somebody rigged them, and you will spend thousands of hours below, beside and around them without ever being a rigger yourself.

That is exactly why this book exists. The people who get hurt by rigging are rarely the riggers. They are the technician who stepped under a truss as it was flown, the stagehand who added a bag of cable to a point, the lighting tech whose safety bond was looped round the clamp instead of the truss, and the crew member who saw a damaged sling and assumed somebody else would mention it. Awareness is what prevents every one of those.

What this book covers

Why rigging is different, who does what on a rigging call, and what competent and qualified mean; load, rating, safety factor, what a load really includes, dynamic and shock loads, and why angles matter; the hardware, hoists, truss and ground support you will see; what technicians themselves hang — clamps, safety bonds and secondaries — and what damaged gear looks like; the load hazard zone, the lift sequence, the calls and signals and helping as ground crew; and the limits of a non-rigger, and the path to becoming a rigger.

It was measured against the international code of practice for entertainment rigging, the American event safety standard for rigging, the British Columbia safety bulletin on overhead load rigging, the user inspection standard for truss, and the certification outline for arena riggers, taking from each what every non-rigger working near rigging needs to know.

What this book does not do

It does not qualify you to rig, to operate a chain hoist, to work at height, or to make any decision about a load, a point or a structure. Those need training, supervised experience and assessment. This book makes you safe around rigging, useful to riggers, and able to recognise when something is wrong.

How to Use This Book

Each chapter follows the same shape, and the shape matters more than it might look. You read the ideas, then you see them play out in a real situation, then you get the procedure, then you are shown what goes wrong and how to recognise it early. Reading only the parts that look new is the fastest way to arrive on a job holding half of something.

1. Read the chapter body first. This is the understanding layer, and it is written to be read straight through.
2. Read On the job. The same material as a real situation on a real show, which is where it stops being abstract.
3. Work through How to do it. These are procedures you can follow on a job this week.
4. Study What goes wrong. Experienced crew are not people who never make mistakes; they are people who recognise mistakes early.
5. Do the exercise before reading the answer key. Recognition feels like learning and is not.
6. Take the checklist with you. Photograph it on your phone. Use it until you no longer need it.

Keep a notebook

One habit is worth starting today, before the first chapter: keep a small notebook and write down what you learn about rigging on each job — the head rigger's name, where the load hazard zones are, the calls this crew uses, the weight of the fixtures your department hangs, and anything a rigger showed you about fitting a safety or spotting damage.

Write it by hand. Writing down a weight or a rule is how you notice it, and noticing is most of what this book asks of you.

Then use it twice. Read a few pages on the way to a job, and carry it on the job, because the rule you cannot quite remember is the one that matters when a load is moving.

A note on the words

Rigging vocabulary changes between countries, companies and crews. A chain hoist is a motor to almost everyone. A wire rope sling is a steel. A round sling is a spanset or a soft. A secondary suspension is a safety, a safety bond or a safety cable. WLL and SWL are both used for the load a piece is rated to carry. The load hazard zone is the drop zone or simply under the load.

When a word is not clear, ask what it means on this call. Around rigging, a misunderstood word is a hazard, not an embarrassment.

A note on safety

Rigging puts heavy loads over people's heads. A flown loudspeaker array, a truss full of lights or a hanging screen can weigh as much as a car, and a load that falls from height does not give a warning. The hazards are the load itself, the points and hardware holding it, work at height, and people standing where they should not be while it moves.

Nothing in this book qualifies you to rig. It teaches you what riggers do and why, so you can work around suspended loads safely, keep clear when a load is moving, and recognise when something is wrong. Rigging decisions belong to qualified riggers and, where a structure is involved, to the engineer and the venue.

Where this book sits

This book assumes no rigging experience at all. It is for every audio, video, lighting and stage technician who works under and around rigging without being a rigger.

What pairs with this

• Safety Awareness & Rigging Basics — every other hazard on the same site

Where it leads

These are not steps in an order. Take whichever one fits.

• Rigging Fundamentals — if rigging draws you, the first book towards joining a rigging crew
• Personal Fall Arrest Systems (PFAS) — Certification Prep — the fall protection training that rigging work at height needs

Before You Begin

Why Rigging Is Different

Of all AV work, rigging carries the gravest consequences. Respect for it starts with understanding why.

The stakes

Rigging is the practice of suspending equipment overhead — line-array speakers, lighting trusses, video screens, scenic elements — often weighing hundreds or thousands of pounds, above crew and audiences. The reason it is treated with such seriousness is simple and grave: if a suspended load fails, heavy gear falls on people, and the result can be fatal. There is no room for error and no second chance, which is why rigging has the strictest training, standards, and culture of any AV discipline.

This book exists so that everyone on a crew — not just riggers — understands rigging well enough to work around it safely and recognise danger. You may spend years in AV without becoming a rigger, but you will constantly work near rigging, and your awareness keeps you and others safe. Understanding why rigging is different is the foundation of treating it with the respect it demands.

Why certification exists

Rigging requires proper training because doing it safely demands real knowledge: how to assess loads, what structure can bear weight, which components to use and how, how to calculate and stay well within limits, and how to build redundancy so a single failure is not catastrophic. Recognised rigging certifications exist precisely to ensure the people suspending heavy gear over crowds genuinely have this knowledge. A certified rigger has been trained and tested to a standard. The work itself belongs to riggers who are competent and qualified for it, and certified or licensed wherever the country, venue or employer requires it.

For everyone else, certification draws a clear line: rigging is for qualified riggers, and the responsible non-rigger never crosses that line. This is not about hierarchy or gatekeeping — it is that the consequences of untrained rigging are lethal. Knowing that rigging is specialised work for qualified riggers, and respecting that boundary absolutely, is the single most important thing this book teaches.

Who is who on a rigging call

A rigging call has a small, clear structure, and a non-rigger needs to know it, because it tells you whose instructions to follow around the rig.

The head rigger, sometimes the production rigger or rigging lead, is responsible for the whole rig: the plan, the points, the calculations, the crew and every decision about loads and structure. When there is any doubt about rigging, the head rigger is the person who decides.

Up riggers work at height, on the steel, the beams or the grid, making the points: attaching slings, shackles and hoists to the structure. Ground riggers work on the floor, preparing hardware, sending it up on hand lines, laying out the rig, and controlling the area below.

The hoist operator runs the chain hoist controller during lifts, under the head rigger's direction. Spotters watch parts of a lift the operator cannot see and call stop if anything goes wrong.

On many shows, the venue has its own house rigger, who knows the building's structure and signs off what the production hangs from it, and a production rigger who travels with the show.

Everyone else — audio, video, lighting, stage and scenic crews — works around the rig and follows the riggers' instructions about where they may be and what they may touch.

Competent and qualified

Rigging standards use two words carefully, and they draw the line this book is built on.

A competent person is someone who, through training and experience, can recognise the hazards of a particular task and has the authority to take action to correct them. A qualified person has recognised qualifications, certification or extensive knowledge and experience, and has successfully shown the ability to solve problems relating to the work.

On a rigging call, rigging work is done by people who are competent and qualified for it, and the decisions about loads, structure and hardware are made by them. A technician who has watched riggers for years is not competent or qualified to rig because of it. Being able to explain what a rigger is doing, as this book will teach you, is not the same as being able to do it.

The rigging call

On the job

A touring concert loads into an arena. The lighting crew chief wants to hang a small extra truss for a follow-spot position the designer asked for that afternoon, and asks a lighting technician to "grab a couple of spansets and a shackle and hang it off that beam — it's only fifty kilos".

The technician knows where the round slings and shackles are. He also knows he is not a rigger, and that nobody on the lighting crew is either. He says he will find the head rigger.

The head rigger comes over, looks at the beam, and says it is not on the arena's list of rated points: the house rigger has marked that section of steel as not to be loaded. She finds a rated point two metres away, calculates the load with the truss, fixtures, cable and hoist included, which is well over fifty kilograms, and has her up rigger make the point.

The truss is hung an hour later, safely. The crew chief had not been reckless; he simply did not know what the riggers knew about that beam. Neither did the technician — which is exactly why he went to get the person who did.

How to do it

1. Ask yourself whether it is rigging — anything suspended overhead from structure, a point or a hoist.
2. If it is, do not do it, whoever asks.
3. Find the head rigger and explain what is wanted.
4. Give them the weight of everything involved, if you know it.
5. Follow their decision and instructions.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer before checking.

Core Concepts: Load, Rating, Safety Factor

The language of rigging is the language of weight and limits. These ideas underpin everything.

Load and rating

The load is the weight being supported — the speaker, the truss and everything hung on it, including the weight of the rigging gear itself. Knowing the true load is the starting point of all rigging, because everything else must be rated to handle it safely. Every piece of rigging equipment has a rating, often expressed as a Working Load Limit (WLL) — the maximum weight it is certified to bear in normal use. Using gear within its rating is the absolute baseline of safe rigging.

This is why rigging is so calculation-driven: riggers must know the load and ensure every component in the chain — the point, the sling, the motor, the truss — is rated above it. A single under-rated or overloaded component is a failure waiting to happen. As an aware non-rigger, you do not do these calculations, but understanding that everything has a rated limit and must never be exceeded explains why riggers are so meticulous and why you must never add weight to rigging without a rigger's assessment.

Safety factor

Rigging gear is not used right up to the point where it would break — it is used well below it, with a safety factor (a multiple of margin between the rated working limit and the actual breaking strength). This margin accounts for wear, shock loads, imperfect conditions, and the simple reality that lives depend on it. The safety factor is why a properly rigged, properly rated system has a large buffer against failure, and why staying within ratings is conservative by design.

Understanding the safety factor explains the rigging mindset: build in margin, never push limits, treat the rated figures as already conservative and stay within them. It also explains why overloading is so dangerous — it eats into the safety margin that exists to protect people. The aware professional respects that the numbers riggers work to already include this protective buffer, and that anything which erodes it (extra weight, damaged gear, shock loading) is a serious hazard.

What a load really includes

The most common mistake non-riggers make about rigging is counting only the thing they care about. A lighting technician thinks of the fixture's weight. A video technician thinks of the LED panels. What actually hangs is far more.

On a lighting truss, the load includes every fixture, every clamp, every safety bond, every piece of cable including the length that hangs down to the floor, any accessories such as top hats and barn doors, the truss itself, and on a long drop, the weight of the hoist chain. An LED wall includes its panels, its hanging bars or frames, its data and power cable, its processors if they are flown, and its bracing. A PA hang includes the cabinets, the rigging frame, the pins, the amplifier cable and any angle straps.

Cable is the one people forget. A multicore or a bundle of power cable hanging twenty metres from a truss to the floor weighs a great deal, and it is attached to a point that was calculated for a particular load.

That is why technicians give riggers their department's real weights, from spec sheets, including everything they intend to hang, and why a fixture added late in the day is a question for the rigger, not a quick job.

Static, dynamic and shock loads

A load hanging still is a static load. A load that is moving — being lifted, lowered, starting, stopping, swinging — is a dynamic load, and it pulls harder than its weight while it accelerates or decelerates.

A shock load is the extreme case: a load that falls, even a short distance, and is then suddenly stopped. The force of catching it can be many times its weight. A fixture that drops a few centimetres onto a slack safety bond, a hoist that jerks, or a load that slips and catches can put forces on hardware far beyond anything it was calculated for.

Two practical rules follow for non-riggers. A safety bond is fitted as short as possible, so that if the clamp fails, the fixture falls the shortest distance before it is caught. And any rigging hardware that has been shock loaded — a safety that caught a falling fixture, a sling that took a jolt — may be damaged in ways nobody can see, and must be reported to the rigger and taken out of service.

Why angles matter

One fact about rigging surprises almost everybody: when a load hangs from two points on angled legs, like a bridle, each leg can carry more than half the load — and as the legs spread wider, each leg can carry more than the whole load.

With the two legs hanging nearly straight down, each carries about half. With ninety degrees between them, each carries about seventy percent of the load. With a hundred and twenty degrees between them, each carries the entire load. Wider still, the force climbs steeply.

A non-rigger never calculates these forces, and should never use this to make a decision. What it explains is why riggers are so particular about geometry, and why nobody but the rigger who calculated a rig ever moves a point, lengthens a leg or adjusts where a load hangs "just a little".

Point loads, and loading truss at the nodes

A load concentrated at one spot on a beam or truss is a point load. A load spread along it, like the truss's own weight or a row of fixtures, is distributed. The same weight is much harder on a span as a point load in the middle than spread out along it, and truss manufacturers publish load tables that give both.

For a technician hanging fixtures on truss, the practical rule is where to clamp. A truss is strongest where its diagonal braces meet the main tubes, called chords, at the nodes. Heavy fixtures, bridles and slings go at or near nodes, not in the middle of a long unbraced section of chord.

And a truss is designed for loads hung from its chords. Clamping heavy loads to a single diagonal brace, or hanging from a truss in a way its manufacturer does not allow, is not permitted without the rigger's approval.

What hangs on a lighting truss

Each leg's share of the load

Two symmetrical legs, as a share of the whole load. The shape of the relationship only — every real calculation belongs to a qualified rigger.

On the job

A conference general session. The lighting truss has been flown to trim, and the video department wants to add two small confidence monitors on arms clamped to the downstage truss, plus their cable. The video tech works it out: two monitors at eight kilograms each is sixteen kilograms, and there must be room for sixteen kilograms on a truss that size.

He takes the question to the head rigger anyway. She asks what else goes up with them: the arms at three kilograms each, the clamps, safety bonds, and two runs of power and SDI hanging nine metres to the floor. The real addition is closer to thirty kilograms, all at one point on one side of the span. She checks the plot: the downstage hoist on that side is already near its planned load, because the lighting designer added two fixtures that morning.

She moves the monitors to the other end of the truss, near a node and closer to the less loaded hoist, and has the video tech run the cable along the truss to the other side before it drops, so its weight shares between both hoists. The plot is updated.

The monitors were light. The load was not, and it was not where he thought.

How to do it

1. List everything your department wants to hang, including accessories.
2. Take weights from spec sheets or weigh the items, and round up.
3. Add clamps, safety bonds, arms and mounting hardware.
4. Estimate the cable, including the length hanging to the floor.
5. Say where on the truss or rig you want it.
6. Give the total to the head rigger before anything goes up, and follow their answer.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer before checking.

Rigging Gear & How a Load Is Built

From the building's steel down to the fixture, a suspended load is a rated chain.

Where loads attach

A suspended load must ultimately be carried by something strong enough: rated building structure — steel beams, certified rigging points, or engineered structures built for the purpose. Not every beam or pipe can bear a load; determining what structure is adequate is expert work. The rigging point is the attachment to that structure. From there, components like slings, shackles, and steel connect down to motors (chain hoists that raise and lower loads) and to the truss or bar that the AV gear hangs from.

A bridle is an arrangement that spreads a load between points or positions it correctly. Every one of these components — point, shackle, sling, motor, truss — is rated, inspected, and assembled by riggers into a chain that safely carries the load from the structure down to the fixture. The integrity of the whole depends on every link, which is why riggers are meticulous about each component and its condition.

The load from top to bottom

Put together, a rigged AV load is a top-to-bottom chain: the building structure carries a rigging point, which carries a motor or sling, which carries a truss or bar, from which the fixture (speaker, light, screen) hangs. Each level transfers the weight to the one above, all rated above the load. Seeing this chain helps you understand what you are looking at when you see gear flown overhead — and why nothing in that chain can be casually altered.

Often there is also secondary safety: a backup (such as a safety cable or bond) so that if a primary connection fails, the gear is still caught and does not fall. This redundancy is part of professional rigging's defence in depth. As a non-rigger, recognising this chain and its safety backups helps you appreciate the care involved and reinforces why you never interfere with any part of it.

Recognising the hardware

You do not need to be able to rig with it, but you do need to recognise the hardware above you, so you can understand what you see and describe what looks wrong.

A wire rope sling, usually called a steel, is a length of steel wire rope with an eye at each end. Steels wrap round beams and connect hoists to structure, and are chosen because they resist heat and cutting.

A round sling, often called a spanset or a soft, is an endless loop of synthetic yarn inside a protective cover, colour-coded by its rated capacity in many countries. Round slings are gentle on truss and structure and are damaged by cuts, heat and sharp edges.

A shackle is a U-shaped or bow-shaped steel connector with a pin across its open end, joining slings, hoists and other hardware. Its pin is screwed in and secured, often with wire or a cable tie, called mousing, so it cannot unscrew.

A beam clamp grips the flange of a steel beam so a load can hang from it without wrapping a sling round it.

Short lengths of heavy chain, sometimes called STAC chain, adjust the length of a point. And everything rated carries a marking or label with its working load limit.

Chain hoists, and who runs them

Chain hoists, called motors by almost everybody, lift the rig and hold it in the air. An electric motor drives a load chain over a sprocket, a brake holds the load when the motor stops, and a limit switch stops travel at the ends.

Hoists are run from a controller, often a box with a switch per hoist, that allows several hoists to move together. Only a trained hoist operator, under the head rigger's direction, uses it. Nobody else touches the controller, plugs a hoist in or out, or runs a hoist to move a truss out of the way.

Hoists are made to different safety standards depending on how they are used. In Europe and many other places they are classified: a D8 hoist is used with a secondary suspension over people, a D8+ hoist is designed with extra safety features to hold loads over people, and a C1 hoist is designed to move loads over people. A non-rigger does not need the details, but should know that the hoists over an audience were chosen for that purpose by people who understand the difference.

Truss, towers and ground support

Truss is a lightweight structural frame of aluminium tubes: main tubes called chords, connected by diagonal braces. Box truss has four chords, triangular truss three. Sections are joined with connectors — often conical couplers with pins, or plates with bolts — and every connection must be complete, with every pin or bolt in place, for the truss to carry its rated load.

Truss also builds towers, and ground support systems use towers with sleeve blocks and a top section to lift a roof or a truss grid from the ground, without hanging from the building at all. Ground support has its own rules: outriggers, base plates and ballast, guying against wind, and lifting procedures, all designed and checked by trained people.

For a technician, three rules cover truss. Never climb a tower or truss unless you are trained and it is your job. Never remove a pin, bolt, brace, outrigger or ballast weight, even for a moment. And report any truss that looks bent, dented or has a cracked weld or damaged connection, because it has no rating any more.

Venue rigging points are for engineers and riggers

A venue's structure — its beams, trusses, grid and catwalks — can carry only what it was designed for, and only at particular places. Many venues publish their rigging points and their capacities, have a house rigger who controls them, and require the production's rigging plot to be approved before anything is hung.

Not every pipe, beam or catwalk rail in a building is a rigging point. A sprinkler pipe, a cable tray, a lighting pipe in a ballroom ceiling, a decorative beam or a handrail may look strong and be nothing of the kind.

So the rule for a non-rigger is absolute: nothing is hung from any part of a building except by the riggers, from points they have confirmed. That includes banners, signs, small speakers, cable supports and anything else "just tied up there for the show".

Hardware you will see

On the job

A hotel ballroom. The AV company is hanging a centre projection screen, and the ballroom's ceiling has a row of heavy steel pipes that look like the obvious place to rig from. A new stagehand starts looping a round sling over one while the rigger is at the truck.

The rigger comes back in and stops him. The hotel's rigging information shows that the rated points are the eyebolts at set positions in the ceiling, marked on the plan; the steel pipes are the building's sprinkler main. A load on them could break a joint and flood the ballroom, or worse.

Nothing was damaged, because the rigger was back in time. The stagehand puts the sling back in the bin, and the rigger walks him round the ceiling, pointing out the rated eyebolts and the things that look like points and are not. By lunchtime he can pick out the sprinkler pipes, the cable trays and the lighting track at a glance.

How to do it

1. Know which structures are rigging, truss and ground support, and who built them.
2. Never climb truss or towers unless trained and assigned.
3. Never remove pins, bolts, braces, outriggers or ballast.
4. Keep cases and vehicles clear of tower bases and guy lines.
5. Report damaged truss, missing pins or loose connections straight away.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer before checking.

What Technicians Hang, and What They Report

Technicians who are not riggers still attach things to rigging every day. Lighting crews clamp fixtures to truss before it flies. Video crews fit monitors and cameras to truss. Audio crews fix small loudspeakers and cable supports. That work is done under the riggers' plan and direction, and it has its own rules, which are exactly where many rigging incidents begin.

This chapter covers fitting clamps and safety bonds correctly, what a secondary suspension is and is not, the rule about adding anything, why hardware is never modified, and how to recognise and report damaged rigging gear.

Clamps and safety bonds, fitted correctly

A fixture hung on truss is attached with a clamp, and backed up with a safety bond. Both have rules.

The clamp is the right type and size for the tube it grips, rated for the load, and fitted to a chord of the truss, not a brace. It is tightened fully, and the fixture's own mounting bolt through the clamp is tight and secured. On a truss that will fly, fixtures are hung and checked at ground level, before the truss leaves the floor, so nobody has to fix them at height.

The safety bond — a short steel cable with a snap hook or quick link — is the backup if the clamp fails. It is rated for the fixture, passes through a strong structural part of the fixture, such as its yoke or its safety eye, and around the truss chord itself, never round the clamp or a brace. It is fitted as short as possible, with no slack loop, so the fixture falls the shortest distance before the bond catches it. Its hook or link is closed and, where it has one, locked.

The mistakes that matter are easy to see once you know them: a bond looped round the clamp, so that if the clamp fails, the bond goes with it; a bond through a handle or a plastic part of the fixture; a long slack loop; an open snap hook; a bond round a brace.

Accessories — barn doors, top hats, colour frames, gobo holders — have their own safety cables too, because a barn door falling from a truss is a serious injury below.

Secondary suspensions

A secondary suspension is a second, independent way of holding a load so that it cannot fall if the primary suspension fails. The safety bond on a fixture is one. At larger scale, secondaries are fitted to trusses and loads hanging from hoists that are not designed to hold loads over people on their own, and are part of the rigging plan.

A secondary is not a spare primary. It is fitted as close to taut as practical, so a failure drops the load the smallest possible distance, and it is designed to catch a load once. After it has caught one, it is out of service.

A non-rigger never removes, loosens or shortcuts a secondary, and never assumes a load is fine because "it has a safety on it". A load that is resting on its safety has already had a failure.

Adding anything to rigging needs the rigger

Every point in a rig was calculated for a specific load. Adding weight — another fixture, a monitor, a banner, a bag of cable, a camera — changes that load, sometimes at a point already near its limit.

So the rule is the same for everything, however small: nothing is added to a truss, a point, a hoist, a bridle or any part of rigging without the head rigger's agreement. Give them the weight and the position, as the loads chapter describes, and follow their answer. The rigger may say yes immediately, move it, or say no.

The same applies to people. Nobody climbs, hangs from or leans a ladder against rigging or truss unless it is part of trained, planned work. And nobody uses rigging as a convenient place to hang coats, bags or tools.

Never modify rated hardware

Rated rigging hardware is rated only in the condition it was made and tested. A shackle with a different pin, a clamp drilled to take a bigger bolt, a sling that has been knotted, shortened or tied, a truss with a bolt in place of its proper pin, a snap hook bent open or an eye bolt with a washer added — each has no rating at all.

Improvised hardware is the same: cargo straps, rope, cable ties, bungee cords, fence wire, hardware store chain and ratchet straps are not rigging, however strong they look.

If the right hardware is not available, the answer is to stop and tell the rigger, not to make something work.

What damage looks like

Riggers inspect their gear, but a technician who knows what damage looks like adds another pair of eyes, and many problems are first noticed by someone on the ground.

Wire rope slings: broken wires sticking out, kinks, crushing, flattening, the strands opened up in a bird-cage shape, rust, heat damage, or a damaged ferrule where the eye is formed.

Round slings and flat webbing slings: cuts, holes or abrasion in the cover, the inner yarn showing through, burns, melting, chemical damage, knots, or a missing or unreadable label.

Shackles: a bent body or pin, a pin that is not the shackle's own, a pin not fully screwed in, missing mousing, or wear and cracks.

Truss: dents, bends or kinks in chords, cracked or broken welds, missing or bent braces, and damaged or elongated connection holes.

Hoists and chain: twisted, stretched, worn or damaged links, chain that does not run smoothly, a hoist making unusual noises, or a chain bag overfull or damaged.

Anything that has been dropped, shock-loaded or run over is also suspect even when it looks perfect.

Reporting defects and near misses

When you see damaged gear, an incorrect safety, a missing pin or anything else that looks wrong, say so straight away, to the person who fitted it or to the head rigger, in plain words: "that safety is round the clamp", "this steel has broken wires near the eye".

If the gear is on the floor, keep it out of use until the rigger has seen it, and do not put it back in the bin. If it is overhead, do not try to fix it yourself; tell the rigger and keep people out from under it until they have dealt with it.

Near misses — a dropped shackle pin that landed beside someone, a truss that swung into a lighting position, a load that moved when it should not have — are reported too, because they tell the riggers something is not controlled. Riggers want these reports, and nobody is criticised for making one.

A safety bond, right and wrong

Damage to report

Never used as rigging

• Cargo or ratchet straps.
• Rope, cable ties or bungee cords.
• Hardware store chain or fence wire.
• Anything drilled, bent, knotted or with a substituted part.

On the job

A lighting crew is hanging twenty moving lights on a truss at head height before it flies. A new technician fits her fixtures quickly and neatly, and loops each safety bond through the fixture's handle and round the clamp's body, where it sits tidily without a loose end.

The lighting crew chief, walking the truss before it flies, stops at the first one. The handle is plastic and bolted to the fixture's cover, and the clamp is the thing the safety exists to back up. If the clamp let go, the fixture would fall with the bond still attached to it.

He shows her the fixture's safety eye in the yoke, runs the bond through it and around the bottom chord of the truss, pulls it as short as the hook allows and locks the snap hook. She redoes all five of hers in ten minutes and checks the rest of the truss with him.

Before the truss flies, the rigger does his own check, and every safety on it is right. The crew chief's walk-round was the part of the system that meant the rigger's check found nothing.

How to do it

1. Check the fixture, clamp and safety bond for damage.
2. Fit the clamp to a chord, at the position the plot shows, near a node for heavy fixtures.
3. Tighten the clamp and the fixture's mounting bolt fully.
4. Pass the safety bond through the fixture's yoke or safety eye and around the truss chord.
5. Make it as short as possible, and close and lock the hook or link.
6. Fit safety cables to accessories.
7. Dress cable so it cannot snag, and have your crew chief or rigger check before the truss flies.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer before checking.

Working Safely Around Rigging

Most crew aren't riggers but work near rigging constantly. These rules keep you alive.

The non-negotiables

A few rules are absolute around rigging. Never stand or walk under a suspended load or under work being rigged overhead — the area beneath rigging is the danger zone, and falling objects are a primary hazard. Respect exclusion zones the riggers establish and keep clear when loads are being raised, lowered, or worked on. Never add weight to, hang anything from, or interfere with rigging without a rigger's explicit assessment and approval — what looks like spare capacity may not be. And report anything that looks wrong: a frayed sling, a loose connection, a fixture that looks insecure.

These are not suggestions; they are the rules that prevent deaths. The discipline of staying clear of loads, following the riggers, and never improvising with anything overhead is what keeps the inevitable presence of heavy suspended gear from becoming a tragedy. Wearing a hard hat where required is part of this, but the first defence is simply not being under the load in the first place.

Supporting riggers safely

Non-riggers often assist rigging in ground-based ways — moving gear, spotting, relaying communication — and doing this safely means following the rigger's direction exactly and staying within your role. Clear communication is vital: rigging operations use careful calls (stand clear, all stop) and everyone involved must understand and respect them. If you are ever unsure what is happening or what you should do, stop and ask rather than guessing near suspended loads.

The same applies to working at height generally. Ladders, lifts, and elevated platforms have their own safe-use requirements and certifications; like rigging, working at height is trained work, and falls are a leading cause of serious injury. The responsible professional supports rigging operations within their competence, follows the qualified people, and never steps beyond their training into the rigging or height work itself.

The load hazard zone, and hard hats

The load hazard zone is the area a suspended or moving load, or anything falling from it, could reach. It is wider than the footprint of the load, because falling objects bounce and swing.

While anything is being lifted, lowered or worked on overhead, the zone is marked, announced or both, and kept empty of everybody not needed for the work. It remains a hazard zone while a load hangs above it, not only while the load moves.

Stay out of it. Walk round it. Do not duck under barrier tape because the hoists are quiet for a moment; riggers may be about to move them. Do not leave cases or tools in it, because somebody will go back for them.

Where people must be near rigging work — the ground riggers, the hoist operator, spotters — hard hats are worn, and many sites require them everywhere during load-in and load-out. A hard hat does not make it acceptable to stand under a load; it reduces the harm from small falling objects to people who have a reason to be nearby.

The lift sequence

Knowing the order a lift follows tells a non-rigger when to stay clear and why the riggers stop when they do.

First the area is cleared and the zone announced. The riggers confirm every connection has been checked. Each hoist is bumped briefly to confirm it moves the right way. Slack is taken up evenly. The load is then floated: lifted just clear of the floor and stopped, while every connection, chain and bag is checked with the weight on it.

Then the load is flown in controlled moves, with stops to keep it level and spotters watching the path. It stops short of its final height, then is trimmed to the height on the plot, level. Secondaries are fitted as planned, and only then is the zone released.

A non-rigger's part is simple: stay clear from the moment the zone is announced until it is released, keep the flight path clear of anything you are responsible for, and call stop if you see anything the riggers may not.

Calls and hand signals

Rigging runs on short, clear calls, and everybody on site needs to understand the ones that matter to them, instantly.

"Stand clear" means a load is about to move: leave the zone now. "All stop" means everything stops immediately: hoists, lifts and work. "Heads!" shouted means something is falling from above: protect your head and move away from the area below; do not look up. "Rope!" or "Line!" means a line is being dropped from above.

Riggers and crane operators also use hand signals where voices do not carry. The two a non-rigger must recognise are stop, one arm held out to the side, palm down, swept back and forth; and emergency stop, both arms out, palms down, swept back and forth. Anybody who sees danger may give the stop signal.

The crew agrees the calls and signals in use at the briefing. If you are not sure what a call means on this site, ask before the lift starts.

Helping as ground crew

Non-riggers are often asked to help riggers from the ground. Done well, it makes the rigging safer and faster.

On a hand line, you pull hardware or cable up to an up rigger, or lower it down, at the pace they call. Tie nothing on unless you have been shown how, keep out from directly beneath the line, and never let go of a load on a line.

On a tag line, a rope attached to a load being lifted, you guide the load from a distance to stop it swinging or turning. Stand clear of the load's path, never wrap the line round your hand or body, and let go rather than be pulled towards it.

As a spotter, you watch a part of the lift the operator cannot see — a truss end, a path past a lighting position, a door — and call stop the moment anything is wrong.

Whatever the task, follow the rigger's direction exactly, stay within it, and ask when you are unsure rather than guessing near a load.

Wind and weather

Outdoors, and in large open venues, wind acts on hanging loads, screens, banners, scrims and roofs, and rigging plans include wind limits. When a limit is reached, the riggers may stop lifting, lower LED screens or banners, remove wind-catching materials or clear an area.

When the call comes, act on it at once, and follow the site's weather plan. Never climb or work near a structure the riggers have closed because of wind, and report anything that is moving or making noise that it was not before.

Load-out

The end of the night, when everyone is tired and the pressure to finish is high, is when many rigging incidents happen.

Load-out follows its own order, and the riggers run it. Secondaries are removed before hoists move, because a hoist run down against a secondary still attached can overload it or pull a load off balance; the notice at the hoist controller that says secondaries are fitted is only removed when they are off. Loads are lowered under the same zone rules as on the way up. Nothing is unclamped, uncabled or unbolted until the load is on the floor and the riggers have said so.

A non-rigger keeps out of the zone, does not start de-rigging their own gear from a truss until it is down and released, and keeps an eye out for tired shortcuts — someone ducking under a truss coming down, or a hoist run while a person is still working on the truss.

Calls and signals

The lift sequence

• Clear the zone and announce it.
• Check connections, bump hoists, take up slack.
• Float just clear of the floor, stop and check.
• Fly in controlled moves with spotters.
• Trim to the plot height, fit secondaries.
• Release the zone.

On the job

Load-out after a corporate awards show. It is 1 a.m. The lighting truss is coming down, and the lighting crew are waiting to strip their fixtures so they can go home.

As the truss descends through about three metres, a lighting technician walks under the downstage end to start unplugging cable from the fixtures nearest the floor, to save a few minutes. The ground rigger shouts "Stand clear — all stop!" and the hoist operator stops the hoists. The technician backs out.

The head rigger reminds the lighting crew, calmly, that the truss is not released until it is on its blocks, and that a truss coming down is exactly as dangerous as one going up. She also checks the hoist controller: the secondaries on that truss were removed before the lowering began, as the load-out plan says, and the notice at the controller was taken off only after that.

The truss lands on its blocks two minutes later, the zone is released, and the lighting crew strip it without anybody under a moving load.

How to do it

1. Learn the calls and signals in use at the briefing, before the lift starts.
2. Stay out of the load hazard zone from the moment it is announced until the riggers release it.
3. Keep the flight path and the zone clear of your cases, tools and gear.
4. If you help as ground crew, do only what the rigger directs; on a tag line, stand clear of the load's path and never wrap the line round a hand or your body.
5. Call stop if you see anything wrong, and stop instantly on "all stop".
6. At load-out, touch nothing on a truss until it is down and released.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer before checking.

Knowing Your Limits & Getting Qualified

Respect the boundary now; if rigging draws you, there's a real path to crossing it properly.

Your limits as a non-rigger

The defining message of this book is to know and respect your limits. As a non-rigger you can understand rigging, work safely around it, support it in ground-based ways, and recognise hazards — but you do not rig, do not work at height untrained, and do not make decisions about loads or structure. When a task crosses into rigging or height work, the professional response is to get a qualified rigger, every time. Saying that is for a qualified rigger is exactly the judgment that keeps people alive.

This boundary is absolute precisely because the consequences are. There is no acceptable reason — time pressure, confidence, wanting to help — to cross into rigging untrained. The aware professional is genuinely valuable on a crew not despite respecting this limit but because of it: they support rigging safely, never create danger, and never put themselves or others at risk by overreaching.

The path to qualification

If rigging interests you, there is a clear and rewarding path: pursue proper rigging training and certification, learn under experienced riggers, and build competence step by step the right way. Rigging is a respected, well-paid speciality, and qualified riggers are always in demand. The certification routes at the end of this chapter, and the further rigging books in this library, take a motivated person from awareness to qualified rigger over time, through real training rather than shortcuts.

Until you have that training, this awareness book has done its job: you understand rigging, you respect it, you work safely around it, and you know exactly where your limits are and how to grow beyond them properly. That combination — capable support, absolute respect for the safety line, and a real path forward — is what makes you an asset around the most dangerous work in AV.

Practical sign-off

What this book teaches is reinforced on site under supervision. The learner identifies a load path and exclusion zone, follows a rigger's direction safely, and correctly defers all rigging and height tasks to qualified people. A mentor signs off when the learner works safely and within limits around rigging. Note: this does not replace rigging or height training.

• Identified the load path and exclusion zone of a rigged system
• Stayed clear of suspended loads and respected exclusion zones
• Supported a rigging operation only within their role and the rigger's direction
• Correctly deferred all rigging and height work to qualified people

Rigging certification, country by country

If rigging draws you, there is a recognised route in every major market, and each one combines training, supervised experience and assessment.

In North America, ETCP, the Entertainment Technician Certification Program run by ESTA, certifies riggers in two disciplines, Arena and Theatre. It is not an entry-level certificate: candidates qualify to sit the exam through documented experience, and many venues, unions and employers require or value it.

In the United Kingdom, the National Rigging Certificate, overseen by PLASA, is the entertainment industry's recognised qualification, at levels that reflect experience and responsibility.

In Germany, IGVW's SQQ2 qualification has levels from entry rigger working under supervision up to leading the rigging trade.

In Australia, rigging is licensed high-risk work at basic, intermediate and advanced levels, and a national unit covers arena rigging for live production.

Elsewhere, local rules and qualifications apply, and many riggers also hold certification for working at height, fall protection and rescue, and the lifts they use.

The route runs the same way everywhere: get safe-work training such as working at height and the lifts you will use; learn the fundamentals; work as ground crew under qualified riggers who are willing to teach; keep a written record of every call; and be assessed. Rigging Fundamentals, in this library, is the next book on that path.

Certification routes

On the job

A video technician who has worked around rigging for three years realises she is more interested in the rig than the screens. She asks the head rigger on a tour how she would become a rigger.

The rigger tells her the same thing most would. Start with working at height and lift training, because it makes her useful on a call. Read the fundamentals. Ask to work as ground crew on rigging calls under riggers who will teach, and keep a log of every call: venue, rig, hoists, what she did and who supervised her. After enough documented experience, sit the certification her market recognises.

Two years later, with a log full of calls and signatures, she sits her certification exam. The awareness she had as a technician — staying out of the zone, reporting what looked wrong, counting what she hung — was the first chapter of it.

How to do it

1. Get training for working at height and the lifts you will use.
2. Study rigging fundamentals.
3. Ask to join rigging calls as ground crew under qualified riggers.
4. Keep a written log of every call and who supervised you.
5. Find out the certification your market recognises and its requirements.
6. Build documented experience, then be assessed.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer before checking.

Glossary

What the gear actually looks like

Every device named in this book, in one place. Recognition is the whole point of Chapter 4 — use this page to attach a picture to each name before you meet it on a dock at six in the morning.

Audio

Dynamic microphone

Condenser microphone

Wireless handheld

Radio rack

Mixing console

Stage box / snake

Power amplifier

Main loudspeaker

Subwoofer

Stage monitor wedge

In-ear monitors

DI box

Video

Camera

Video switcher

Scaler / processor

Projector

LED wall panel

Confidence monitor

Lighting & control

Conventional fixture

Moving-head fixture

Lighting console

Dimmer

Show controller

Media server

Networking & infrastructure

Network switch

Patch bay

Equipment rack

Power distribution

Cable tester

A properly coiled cable

Connectors, close up

XLR

TRS / TS ¼-inch

SDI on BNC

HDMI

Cat5e / Cat6 (RJ45)

Fiber optic

DMX (5-pin XLR)

AC power — not signal