Rigging Fundamentals

Introduction

Everything flown over a stage or an audience hangs there because a rigging crew put it there, and it stays there because they got every detail right. There is no version of rigging where most of it being correct is good enough.

That makes rigging one of the most rewarding trades in live events and one of the least forgiving. The people who do it well are not the boldest people on the call. They are the ones who count every kilogram, check every shackle pin, say stop when something looks wrong, and would rather lose ten minutes than find out they were nearly right.

What this book covers

What rigging is and who does what on a call; loads, forces and the maths a rigger uses; wire rope, slings, chain, shackles and the rest of the hardware; truss; chain hoists; plots and mark-out; the rigging process on site; and working at height. It was measured against the certification outlines, national training units, codes of practice and standards that teach rigging at its first level, so that nothing a new rigger is taught elsewhere is missing here.

What this book does not do

It does not qualify you to rig. Every route into rigging runs through training, supervised experience and assessment, and every decision about load or geometry on a real rig belongs to a qualified rigger. This book is what you need to know to be useful and safe while you learn the rest with your hands.

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 technicians 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 the technical details in it as you meet them. Rigging is numbers and names — the weight of a hoist and its chain per metre, the WLL of the round sling colours, the sling angle factors, the formula for sharing a load between two points, the rejection criteria for a steel, the hand signals this crew uses.

Write it by hand rather than photographing this page. Copying a number puts it on paper; rewriting it in your own words is what puts it in your head, and deciding how to word it is most of the understanding.

Then use it twice. Read a few pages on the way to a job, which takes five minutes and turns things you half-know into things you know. And carry it on the job, because the setting you cannot remember is always the one somebody is waiting for.

A note on the words

Rigging vocabulary changes between countries, companies and even crews, and a new rigger should expect it. A chain hoist is a motor to almost everyone. A wire rope sling is a steel, a strop or a wire. A round sling is a spanset, a soft or a poly. WLL and SWL are both used for the load a piece is allowed to carry. The same person is the head rigger, the production rigger or the rigging lead depending on who is talking.

When a word is not clear, ask what it means on this call. On a rigging crew, a misunderstood word is not an embarrassment to avoid; it is a hazard to remove.

A note on safety

Rigging suspends heavy loads over people, and rigging work happens at height. A load that falls, a rigger who falls and a small object dropped from the steel are the three hazards behind nearly every rule in this book, and none of them gives a second chance.

Nothing in this book authorises you to rig, to work at height, to operate lifting equipment or to do electrical work. Each has its own training and, in many places, its own licence. Read it to understand what the qualified people around you are doing and why, and when you are unsure whether something is yours to do, the answer is to ask.

Before You Begin

What Rigging Is

Suspending gear overhead — and why it's serious.

AV rigging

Rigging is the discipline of suspending equipment overhead — hanging lighting, audio (line arrays), video (screens, LED), scenery, and other gear from structure above a stage or space. In AV and live events, huge amounts of heavy gear are flown overhead, and rigging is how it's safely hung. Rigging is a specialised, skilled, and above all safety-critical discipline. Rigging is how gear is safely hung overhead — and it must be done right.

This matters because overhead rigging is one of the most safety-critical activities in AV: heavy loads are suspended above people, and a rigging failure can be catastrophic (falling gear can injure or kill). For this reason, rigging is taken extremely seriously, governed by safety standards, and done only by qualified, trained riggers. Rigging is safety-critical work where mistakes can be fatal.

Why rigging must be done right

Rigging is life-safety-critical for clear reasons: loads are overhead (suspended above people — performers, crew, audience), heavy (often very heavy), and a failure means falling gear (which can kill). There is no margin for error — rigging must be correct, every time. This is why rigging is never improvised or done by the untrained: it requires proper knowledge, the right rated equipment, careful work, inspection, and qualified, certified riggers. Rigging must be perfect because lives depend on it.

Because of this, this book is awareness and foundational understanding ONLY — it helps you understand rigging and its seriousness, but it does NOT qualify you to rig. Real rigging requires hands-on, accredited training (such as ETCP certification), qualified supervision, and following all safety regulations. Anyone doing rigging must be properly trained and qualified. Understanding this boundary is essential. This book builds awareness; real rigging requires certified training and qualification.

Who does what on a rigging call

A rigging call is a small team with clearly separated jobs, and the separation is part of what keeps it safe. The names vary between countries and companies, but the jobs are the same everywhere.

The head rigger, sometimes called the production rigger, owns the rig. They work from the plot, check the venue's capacities, decide how each point is made, and are responsible for the whole system being safe before anyone trusts it. On a large show they spend more time checking than rigging.

Up riggers work at height, on the steel, the catwalks or the grid. They make the points: wrapping the structure, fitting shackles and steels, and calling down when a point is ready to take a load. They are responsible for their own fall protection and for everything they drop.

Ground riggers work on the floor, and the job is as important as the one overhead. They mark out the points, assemble the hardware that will be hauled up, send it up on a hand line, guide it as it rises, attach the hoists, and control the area below the up riggers so nobody walks into it. ICOPER, the international code of practice for entertainment rigging, puts it plainly: the ground rigger controls and safeguards the area below.

The truss crew builds the truss on the floor to the plan and the manufacturer's instructions. The rigging power person — often called the motor tech — distributes power and control to the hoists, checks the direction every hoist runs, and keeps the cables to the plan. The hoist operator runs the controller during a lift, and spotters stand where they can see what the operator cannot, with the authority to call a stop.

Standards distinguish two kinds of person that every rigger should be able to tell apart. A competent person has the training and experience to do a task and to recognise the hazards in it. A qualified person has a recognised qualification, or extensive knowledge and experience, and has shown they can solve problems in the subject — the person who designs the system or signs it off. Above them both, when a load goes beyond what the venue's published limits allow, sits a structural engineer.

A new rigger joins this team as a ground rigger or a truss hand, working under instruction. The rest of this book is what that person needs to know to be useful on the first day and safe on every day after it.

The rules rigging works under

Rigging is regulated everywhere, and regulated differently almost everywhere. There is no single rulebook, but there is a common shape: a law about lifting equipment and work at height, a set of industry standards describing how entertainment rigging is done properly, the manufacturer's instructions for every piece of equipment, and the venue's own rules. All four apply at once, and the strictest wins.

In North America the industry standards come mainly from ESTA through ANSI. The ones a new rigger hears named most are E1.2 for aluminium truss and towers, the E1.6 family for powered hoists, E1.47 for inspection of entertainment rigging systems, E1.21 for outdoor temporary structures, E1.50 for supporting LED and video walls, and ES1.18, Event Safety – Rigging, which sets out how event rigging should be planned and run. The ASME B30 standards cover slings and rigging hardware, and OSHA regulations sit underneath all of it in the United States.

In the United Kingdom, the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations (LOLER), the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations (PUWER) and the Work at Height Regulations are the law, and the National Rigging Certificate is the industry's recognised qualification. In Germany and much of Europe, the IGVW publishes rigging qualifications and codes of practice, EN 17115 covers truss and EN 17206 covers stage machinery, including chain hoists. Australia regulates rigging through a national licensing scheme with basic, intermediate and advanced levels. Canadian provinces each have their own regulations, and British Columbia's Actsafe bulletins are widely used guides.

Internationally, ICOPER, the International Code of Practice for Entertainment Rigging, written by senior riggers from several countries, describes good practice in a way that sits comfortably alongside each region's law.

A new rigger does not need to memorise all of this. What they need is to know that the rules exist, which ones apply where they are working, and that the venue's rigging rules are part of them. Many arenas publish a rigging manual with their own point limits, approved hardware and required paperwork, and a show that ignores it does not rig.

Standards and rules you will hear named

A starting list, not a complete one. Which apply depends on where you are working, and every one of them is updated over time.

Loads, Weight & Forces

Everything in this chapter is here so that you understand what a rigger is doing and why they refuse things. None of it qualifies you to do it. The arithmetic of real rigging belongs to trained, qualified people working from manufacturers' data, and a technician who has read this chapter and starts making decisions from it is more dangerous than one who never read it at all.

Understanding what's being hung and the forces involved.

Loads and weight

At the heart of rigging is the load — what's being hung and how heavy it is. Every rigged item has a weight, and rigging must safely support that weight (plus safety factors). Riggers must know the weight of what they're hanging (the gear, plus rigging hardware) and ensure everything in the rigging chain (points, hardware, structure) can safely bear it. Understanding loads and weight is the foundation of rigging — you can't rig safely without knowing the weights involved. Understanding loads and weight is fundamental to rigging. Rigging starts with knowing the weight being hung.

This connects to AV Math (calculating weights and loads) and is the basis of safe rigging — everything must be rated for and able to bear the load, with safety margins. Underestimating or not knowing weights is dangerous. Knowing and managing the load is foundational to safe rigging. (Real load calculation and rigging must be done by qualified, trained riggers.)

Forces and safety factors

Rigging involves forces beyond simple weight — the forces in the rigging system (how the load's weight translates into forces on the points, hardware, and structure, including how angles and configurations multiply forces) and safety factors (rigging is rated and designed with safety margins — e.g., working load limits well below breaking strength — so it's safe even under unexpected loads). Understanding forces and safety factors is part of rigging awareness. Rigging accounts for forces and safety factors, calculated by qualified riggers.

This is specialised knowledge (real force calculation, working load limits, safety factors) that qualified riggers are trained in — the point here is to understand that rigging is a calculated, engineered, safety-margined discipline, not guesswork. Rigging is engineered with forces and safety factors by trained professionals. (This is awareness; real calculations require qualified training.)

The load is never just the thing you are hanging

Ask what a moving light weighs and you will get the figure from the spec sheet. That figure is not the load.

What actually hangs there is the fixture, plus the clamp holding it, plus the secondary safety, plus the length of power cable and the length of data cable running to it, plus anything bolted to it — a top hat, a barn door, a frame. On a long drop, the hoist chain itself has weight, and enough of it matters.

Individually these are small. Across a truss carrying twenty fixtures they are not, and the difference between the total somebody assumed and the total actually hanging is the space where accidents live.

This has a direct consequence for a technician: when a rigger or a production manager asks what something weighs, the honest answer includes what is attached to it, and if you do not know, the answer is that you do not know. A guess entered into a load calculation is worse than a gap, because a gap gets checked.

A load that moves is not the load that was weighed

A static load is one hanging still. Its force on the structure is its weight, and nothing more.

A dynamic load is one that is moving, or being started and stopped. Accelerating a mass takes more force than holding it, so a hoist starting a lift briefly puts more force into the point than the weight alone. Stopping does the same. So does anything that swings, anything caught by wind on an outdoor stage, and people moving on a structure that is designed to carry them.

This is why riggers care so much about HOW something is lifted, not only what it weighs — why hoists are started and stopped smoothly, why a load is not allowed to swing, and why two hoists lifting one truss must be kept level so one does not take the whole load while the other goes slack.

For a technician the takeaway is small and absolute: do not push, pull, or steady a suspended load unless you have been asked to, and if you have, do it gently and along the direction you were told.

Shock loading, and why a short drop is a big event

If a load falls even a short distance and is then arrested, the force generated is far greater than its weight — because stopping it quickly means decelerating it quickly, and that takes a large force. A fixture that weighs thirty kilograms does not apply thirty kilograms to the thing that catches it. It applies a great deal more, and how much depends on how far it fell and how abruptly it stopped.

This is shock loading, and it is why several things are true that otherwise look excessive.

It is why a secondary safety is fitted with as little slack as possible: a safety with a metre of loop in it allows a metre of fall, and may be destroyed by arresting it even though its rating exceeds the fixture's weight many times over.

It is why a hoist that has been jerked, or a sling that has arrested a falling object, comes out of service and goes for inspection even if it looks perfect. The damage from a shock load is frequently invisible.

And it is why nobody stands under anything.

Why two legs can each carry more than the whole load

This is the least intuitive fact in rigging, and it is the one worth carrying away from this chapter.

Hang a load from two legs meeting at a point above it. Common sense says each leg carries half. That is true only when the legs are vertical and parallel. As they spread apart — as the angle between them widens — the tension in each one rises, and it rises faster than most people expect. Past a certain spread, each leg is carrying more than the entire load weighs.

The reason is that a leg at an angle is doing two jobs: holding the load up, and pulling sideways against the other leg. The wider the spread, the more of its effort goes sideways, and the harder it must pull overall to keep the vertical part the same.

The practical consequence for a technician is a rule with no exceptions. Never move a rigging point, lengthen a leg, or change where something is hung, even slightly, even when it looks like it would obviously be fine. What looks like a small geometric change can be a large change in force, and the person who calculated the original configuration calculated that one and not yours.

Force, weight, and the two directions a force pulls

Weight is a force: the pull of gravity on a mass, always straight down. When riggers say a load is 500 kilograms, they mean the force that mass puts on whatever holds it. Strictly, force is measured in newtons, and hardware in some countries is marked in kilonewtons; one kilonewton is roughly the weight of 102 kilograms, so treating a kilonewton as about 100 kilograms is a close working conversion.

A force has a size and a direction, and it can be split into two parts at right angles, called components. That is the idea behind nearly all rigging maths, and it is simpler than it sounds. A leg of a bridle pulling at an angle is doing two things at once: part of its pull is vertical, holding the load up, and part of it is horizontal, pulling sideways against the structure it hangs from.

The vertical parts of all the legs together must add up to the weight of the load, because that is what stops it falling. The horizontal parts must cancel each other out, because if they did not, the load would move sideways until they did. Everything a rigger calculates about a bridle comes from those two facts.

The horizontal part is the one people forget, and it is not harmless. A bridle leg pulling sideways on a beam pulls that beam sideways, and structural steel is often much stronger in the direction it was designed to carry — down — than sideways. It is one of the reasons a venue's point limits apply to a particular direction of pull.

Centre of gravity, and why loads tilt

Every object behaves as if all its weight were concentrated at one point, its centre of gravity. For a symmetrical piece of truss that point is in the middle. For a truss with a heavy projector at one end, a loudspeaker array, an LED wall with its processor bolted to one side, it is wherever the weight actually is.

A load hung from a single point swings until its centre of gravity is directly below that point, and then hangs still. That is why a load picked from one point off its centre hangs tilted, and why it can swing sideways when it lifts off.

A load hung from two points shares its weight between them according to where the centre of gravity is. If it is exactly halfway, each point carries half. If it is closer to one point, that point carries more — and the chapter on rigging maths shows exactly how much. Lift that load evenly on two hoists and it rises level. Lift one hoist further than the other, and the load tilts, and the centre of gravity moves relative to the points, so the share changes as it tilts.

Where the centre of gravity sits relative to the pick points also decides whether a load is stable. A load hung from points above its centre of gravity wants to hang the right way up. A load picked from points below its centre of gravity — a tall frame lifted from its base — is trying to tip over, and will if it is disturbed. Manufacturers of flown speakers and LED walls publish where to attach precisely because of this.

Determinate and indeterminate — why a third hoist does not share the load

Hang a length of truss from two hoists and the load on each one can be worked out exactly from the weights and the distances. Engineers call that a statically determinate system: the maths alone determines the answer.

Add a third hoist in the middle and the answer stops being fixed. How much each hoist carries now depends on how stiff the truss is and, above all, on exactly how high each hoist has been run. If the middle hoist is a couple of centimetres higher than the other two, it takes far more than its share and the ends go light. If it is a couple of centimetres lower, it can carry almost nothing and the ends carry everything. That is a statically indeterminate system, and nearly every long truss in live events is one.

This has practical consequences that every rigger lives with. Three hoists under a truss rated for a given load do not mean each hoist carries a third of it. Trim — running each hoist up or down by small amounts to level the truss — is not cosmetic; it moves load from one point to another. A hoist running slightly faster than its neighbours during a lift can end up carrying far more than planned for the length of the move.

It is also why load cells exist. A load cell is a sensor fitted in line between a hoist and its point that reads the actual force on that point. On an indeterminate rig, it is the only reliable way to know what each point is really carrying, and ICOPER and ANSI ES1.18 both recommend load monitoring, strongly so for multi-point lifts.

Design factors when the load is over people

The design factor is the ratio between the load that breaks something and the load it is allowed to carry, and the working load limit marked on hardware already includes it. A factor of 5:1, common on slings and rigging hardware, means the item is allowed to carry one fifth of what is expected to break it.

When a load hangs over people, many jurisdictions and guidance documents ask for more than that. Actsafe, British Columbia's arts safety association, recommends 10:1 for a load moving over people and 10:1 for a static load over people, noting that some jurisdictions accept 8:1. Ontario's live performance guideline sets 8:1 as the minimum for the rigging of a flown unit. A secondary suspension that could catch the full load is often expected to have at least 5:1 on its own.

What this means in practice is that the WLL printed on a piece of lifting hardware rated at 5:1 is not always the number you can use over an audience. To reach 10:1 with hardware rated at 5:1, the allowable load is halved. A round sling marked for 1,000 kilograms might therefore be allowed only 500 kilograms when it holds a load over people under that guidance.

Chain hoists have their own version of the same idea, described in the chapter on hoists. Some are built to hold loads over people; others may only do so with a secondary suspension fitted.

None of these numbers is universal, and they change. The one to use is the one the head rigger, the venue and the local rules require for this rig — and a new rigger's job is to know that the number exists, and to ask what it is.

Pulleys, blocks, and the extra load a redirect puts on a point

A block is a pulley in a frame, and rigging uses them in two ways that are worth separating.

A block used to change direction does not reduce the effort at all. A hand line run over a block on a beam and pulled from the floor lifts a 20 kilogram bag of hardware with 20 kilograms of pull. What people do not expect is what it does to the beam. The block is being pulled by both parts of the rope: the load hanging on one side and the person pulling on the other. With both parts hanging straight down, the block and its point carry about twice the load — 40 kilograms for that 20 kilogram bag. As the two parts of the rope spread apart that figure falls, but it only drops below the weight of the load itself once the two parts are more than 120 degrees apart.

That is why a hauling block is rigged to a point that can take the redirect, not clipped to whatever is nearby, and why pulling a load sideways from the floor rather than straight down changes the direction of the force on the block too.

A block used in a tackle — a rope reeved several times between a fixed block and a moving block — does reduce effort. Each part of rope supporting the moving block shares the load, so a tackle with four supporting parts lifts a load with roughly a quarter of the pull, before friction takes some of that back. The price is rope: to raise the load one metre, four metres of rope have to be pulled through. That trade, less force for more distance, is mechanical advantage, and it is also what a double-fall chain hoist does inside.

Bending wire rope — the D/d ratio

Wire rope is strongest when it runs straight. Bend it round something and the outer wires stretch, the inner wires compress, and the rope can no longer carry its full rated strength. The tighter the bend, the more strength it loses.

The measure of how tight is the D/d ratio: the diameter of the thing the rope bends round (D) divided by the diameter of the rope (d). A 10 millimetre steel wrapped round a beam flange with a sharp edge is bending around almost nothing. The same steel round a 100 millimetre pipe has a D/d of 10.

The rule of thumb every rigger carries is that wire rope bent round something the same diameter as itself — a D/d of 1, like a steel choked round another steel, or a thin rope over a small shackle pin — keeps only about half its strength. As the ratio grows the loss shrinks, which is why sheaves in hoists and blocks are large, why a wire rope sling is not wrapped tight round a sharp beam edge without packing or a spreader, and why a manufacturer's rating for a steel used in a basket assumes a bend no tighter than they specify.

Sharp edges are the extreme case. A beam flange cuts into a loaded steel, and cuts straight through a synthetic sling. Edge protection — purpose-made sleeves, corner protectors or packing — is fitted wherever a sling passes over an edge.

What the spread of a bridle does to each leg

Illustrative only, and for understanding rather than use. The angle is the included angle between the two legs, and the figure is roughly what each leg carries as a share of the total load.

Working load limit against breaking strength

Two different numbers that get confused, with serious consequences when they are.

What the design factor is NOT

• It is not permission to exceed the WLL because 'there's margin'. The margin covers wear, shock, misuse and the unknown — not a deliberate overload.
• It is not the same everywhere. Different hardware, different regions and different applications use different factors, and lifting people uses much higher ones.
• It does not apply to damaged gear at all. A worn sling has no known breaking strength, so it has no usable WLL either.

Figures in published guidance

Common figures from published guidance. The figure that applies is the one for this rig, this venue and these rules.

The conversions riggers use

• 1 kilogram is about 2.2 pounds; 1 pound is about 0.45 kilograms.
• 1 kilonewton is the weight of about 102 kilograms — call it 100 for a quick check.
• 1 metre is about 3.28 feet; 1 foot is 0.3048 metres.
• A North American "one-ton" hoist lifts 2,000 lb, about 907 kg. A European 1 t hoist lifts 1,000 kg. They are not the same hoist.

What goes wrong

Rigging Maths, Worked

Every rigger works with numbers, and the numbers in this chapter are the ones every entry-level rigging course teaches: the whole weight of a load, how that weight is shared between two points, what a bridle does to its legs, what a sling hitch does to its capacity, and how much force a short fall creates.

They are here so you can follow a rigger's plan, check your own weights before you give them to anyone, and understand why the answers come out the way they do. On a job, the numbers that decide a point belong to the head rigger, worked from the manufacturers' data and checked. A calculation you make is a question to take to them — never a decision to act on.

Every figure in the examples below is invented for teaching. Real hardware, real truss and real hoists have their own data sheets, and those are the only numbers that go into a real calculation.

Counting the whole load

The earlier chapter said the load is never just the thing you are hanging. Here is what that looks like when you actually count it.

Take a 10 metre length of box truss to be flown on two chain hoists, one at each end, with twelve lighting fixtures on it and a multicore cable running along it and down to the floor. The data sheets say:

The truss weighs 7 kg per metre. The fixtures are 22 kg each, and each clamp and safety adds 1 kg. The multicore weighs 1.2 kg per metre; it runs the length of the truss and then drops 12 metres to the floor. Each hoist body weighs 30 kg, and each has 20 metres of load chain weighing 1.1 kg per metre.

Now count. Truss: 10 × 7 = 70 kg. Fixtures: 12 × 22 = 264 kg. Clamps and safeties: 12 × 1 = 12 kg. Multicore: 10 metres along the truss plus the 12 metre drop, so 22 × 1.2 = 26.4 kg. Hoists: each body is 30 kg and each chain is 20 × 1.1 = 22 kg, so 52 kg per hoist, and 104 kg for two.

Total: 70 + 264 + 12 + 26.4 + 104 = 476.4 kg.

Somebody who counted only the fixtures would have said 264 kg. The real figure is eighty per cent higher. The cable drop is the item most often left out, and ETCP's own sample exam question on total load includes both the hoist chain and the cable down to the floor for exactly this reason.

Two more things belong in the count on some rigs: people, where anyone will climb or sit on the structure, like a follow spot operator in a truss chair, and the forces from fall protection anchored to it. Both are for the head rigger to add, and both are worth asking about.

Sharing a load between two points

A truss hung from two hoists is a simple span, and how a load on it is shared between the two points follows one rule: each point carries the load multiplied by the distance from the load to the other point, divided by the distance between the points.

Written as a formula, the load on point 1 is F1 = W × D2 ÷ S, where W is the load, D2 is its distance from point 2, and S is the span between the points. Point 2 carries whatever is left: F2 = W − F1.

Try it. A 60 kg projector hangs on a 10 metre truss, 2.5 metres from the left hoist. Its distance from the right hoist is 7.5 metres. Left hoist: 60 × 7.5 ÷ 10 = 45 kg. Right hoist: 60 − 45 = 15 kg. The hoist nearer the load carries more of it, which matches intuition, and now you know how much more.

A load spread evenly along the truss, like the truss's own weight or a row of identical fixtures at equal spacing, splits half and half. Several loads are worked one at a time and added up for each point.

Now put a load outside the span. A 20 kg fixture hangs on a 1 metre overhang beyond the right hoist, so it is 11 metres from the left hoist. Right hoist: 20 × 11 ÷ 10 = 22 kg. Left hoist: 20 − 22 = −2 kg. The right hoist carries more than the fixture weighs, and the left point is being lifted by it: the overhang is levering the far end up. On its own that is harmless, because the truss's weight holds the left end down. But it shows why a heavy load on an overhang is never added casually — the point nearest it carries more than the load, and the far point gets lighter.

Bridle legs — length and tension

A two-leg bridle makes a point where there is no steel, by hanging two legs from two beams and joining them at the apex. A rigger needs two answers from its geometry: how long each leg must be to put the apex in the right place, and how much each leg pulls.

The length comes from Pythagoras. Each leg is the long side of a right-angled triangle whose other two sides are the horizontal distance from its beam to the apex (H) and the vertical drop from the beam to the apex (V). So the leg length L = √(H² + V²).

Take two beams 8 metres apart with the apex centred between them, 3 metres below the beams. Each leg has H = 4 m and V = 3 m, so L = √(16 + 9) = √25 = 5 metres.

The tension comes from the same triangle. For a symmetrical bridle, each leg holds up half the load, and its tension is that half multiplied by L ÷ V. With a 500 kg load: each leg carries 250 × 5 ÷ 3 = 417 kg. Each leg is carrying 83 per cent of the whole load, which lines up with the table in the earlier chapter for an included angle of just over 100 degrees.

And the sideways pull on each beam is that half multiplied by H ÷ V: 250 × 4 ÷ 3 = 333 kg, pulling each beam in towards the apex. That horizontal force exists on every bridle and has to be within what the beam can take sideways.

Two things make the tension climb. Spread the beams further apart, and H grows. Shorten the legs so the apex rises towards the steel, and V shrinks. Either one increases L ÷ V, and so the tension, which is why a bridle is never "tightened up a bit" to gain height.

Bridles with unequal legs, three legs, and bridles whose legs hang from beams at different heights use the same principles with more arithmetic, and they belong to the head rigger.

Sling angle factors

The ratio L ÷ V from the last section has a name: the sling angle factor. Multiply the share of the load a leg would carry if it hung vertically by the factor, and you get the tension in the leg.

Riggers often think of it by the angle each leg makes with the horizontal. At 90 degrees — legs vertical — the factor is 1. At 60 degrees it is about 1.15. At 45 degrees it is about 1.41. At 30 degrees it is exactly 2, and each leg of a two-leg bridle is carrying the entire load. Below 30 degrees it climbs steeply, and most guidance says to avoid it.

Those angles from the horizontal are the same bridles as the included angles in the earlier table: legs at 60 degrees from the horizontal have 60 degrees between them, 45 degrees from the horizontal is 90 degrees between them, and 30 degrees from the horizontal is the 120 degree landmark where each leg carries the whole load.

The factor applies to anything with legs at an angle: a basket hitch around a beam, a two-leg chain sling on a lighting pod, a pair of steels to a spreader. ICOPER's lifting rules put it in six words: sling angle factors must be considered.

What a hitch does to a sling's capacity

A sling's marked working load limit is for a straight, vertical pull. The way it is attached changes what it can carry, and there are three basic hitches.

A straight or vertical hitch is the rating as marked: one sling, one leg, pulling straight.

A basket hitch passes the sling round the load or the beam with both ends up to the hook, so the load hangs in the loop. With both legs vertical it can carry up to twice the marked WLL, because two legs share the load. As soon as the legs angle apart, the sling angle factor takes that back: with legs at 60 degrees from the horizontal the basket carries about 1.73 times the WLL, and at 30 degrees it is back to the single-leg rating.

A choke hitch passes one end of the sling through the other so it tightens round the load. The sharp bend where the sling passes through itself reduces its capacity; manufacturers commonly rate a choke at around 80 per cent of the vertical WLL, and less if the choke angle is tight. A choke also grips, which is why it is used to stop a load sliding, and why it is the wrong hitch for anything that must not be crushed.

These figures are typical, not universal. The manufacturer's tag or chart gives the capacity for each hitch, and different sling materials behave differently. Chokes on wire rope are especially sensitive to the bend.

How much force a short fall creates

The earlier chapter explained that a load which falls and is caught generates far more force than its weight. ETCP's formula sheet gives a simplified way to estimate how much: F = W × (fall distance ÷ stopping distance) + W.

The stopping distance is how far the load travels while it is being brought to a halt — the stretch of the rope, the give in the structure, the deformation of whatever caught it. Steel does not give much, so stopping distances are short and forces are large.

Take a 20 kg fixture on a safety with 30 centimetres of slack, and suppose the safety and the truss together stop it within 3 centimetres. F = 20 × (30 ÷ 3) + 20 = 20 × 10 + 20 = 220 kg. A 20 kg fixture has put 220 kg into its safety and the truss.

Fit the same safety with only 5 centimetres of slack: F = 20 × (5 ÷ 3) + 20 ≈ 53 kg. Shortening the slack cut the force by three quarters. That is the arithmetic behind the rule that a safety is fitted snug, and behind Actsafe's guidance of no more than about 20 centimetres of slack on lighting fixture safeties.

The formula is a simplification. Real stopping distances are hard to know, and the real force depends on things it leaves out. Its value is in showing the shape: fall distance multiplies force, and stiff things that stop a load abruptly multiply it most.

Reading a truss load table

Truss manufacturers publish load tables showing what each truss can carry. They look intimidating and they follow a common pattern, so learning to read one is a single job done once.

Each row is a span: the distance between the supports, usually in steps of a metre or two feet. Longer spans always carry less, and the table ends at the longest span the manufacturer allows.

The columns describe how the load sits. A uniformly distributed load, or UDL, is weight spread evenly along the whole span. Tables give it either as a total for the span or as a figure per metre or per foot, and the header says which. Mixing those two up is the classic reading error. A centre point load, sometimes CPL, is a single load at the middle of the span. A third-point load, TPL, is two equal loads at the third points, and a quarter-point load, QPL, is three equal loads at the quarter points. For point-load columns, check whether the figure is each load or all of them together.

Many tables also give deflection: how far the truss sags in the middle under the allowable load. It is there because a truss that is strong enough can still bend more than a production can accept.

And every table has notes, which are part of the table. They say whether the truss's own weight is already included, which way up the truss must be, what connectors and pins it assumes, and what supports it assumes, usually a simple span with the loads hung from the bottom chords at nodes. A load table used without its notes is being misread.

The number in the table is the most that span and that loading pattern can take. It is not the truss's capacity for any other span, any other pattern, or any truss that is damaged, which is exactly why the earlier chapter said a truss does not have a single rating.

The formulas in this chapter

For following a rigger's working and checking your own weights. A qualified rigger works the real numbers from the manufacturers' data.

Angles and hitches at a glance

Typical values. The manufacturer's chart for the actual sling is the one that applies.

Hitches, as a share of the sling's vertical WLL

• Vertical — 100 per cent.
• Choke — commonly about 80 per cent, less if the choke is tight.
• Basket with vertical legs — up to 200 per cent.
• Basket with legs at 60° from horizontal — about 173 per cent; at 45°, about 141 per cent; at 30°, 100 per cent.

How to do it

1. List every item on the truss with its weight from its data sheet — truss per metre, fixtures, clamps, safeties, cable along it and its drop to the floor, and anything else attached.
2. Note where each item sits along the span, measured from one hoist.
3. Split every evenly spread load, such as the truss itself, half to each hoist.
4. For every point load, work its share on each hoist with F1 = W × D2 ÷ S and F2 = W − F1.
5. Add all the shares for each hoist, then add that hoist's own body and chain weight to its point.
6. Compare each total with what the plan says for that point, and take any difference to the head rigger before anything is lifted.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Work these out, then check. They use invented figures for practice, and the answers are for checking your working — not for rigging anything.

Points, Structure & Hardware

What gear hangs from, and the equipment that hangs it.

Rigging points and structure

Rigging hangs from points on structure — the places gear is attached to overhead (rigging points on a venue's structure, truss, grid, or rated structural steel). The structure and points must be rated and able to safely bear the loads (a point is only as good as what it's attached to and that structure's capacity). Riggers must use proper, rated points on adequate structure, confirmed safe for the loads. Understanding points and structure (conceptually) is central to rigging awareness — you can only hang from what can safely bear it. Understanding points and structure is part of rigging. Rigging hangs from rated points on adequate, confirmed structure.

This is critical: hanging from inadequate or unrated points/structure is extremely dangerous. Qualified riggers determine and confirm safe points and structure for the loads. Safe rigging requires safe, rated points and structure, confirmed by qualified riggers.

Rigging hardware

Rigging uses specialised, rated hardware — the equipment that connects the load to the points: things like rated slings, shackles, steel/wire rope, chain hoists/motors (to lift and hold loads), clamps, and connectors. All rigging hardware is rated (with working load limits), must be the right type and rating for the load, and must be in good, inspected condition (rigging hardware is inspected and retired if damaged). Understanding rigging hardware is part of rigging. Rigging uses rated, inspected, correctly-used hardware.

Using the right, rated, sound hardware correctly is essential to safe rigging — the wrong, overloaded, or damaged hardware fails. Qualified riggers know, select, inspect, and use the correct hardware. Safe rigging depends on correct, rated, inspected hardware used by trained riggers.

Point load, distributed load, and why a truss rating is not one number

"The truss takes five hundred kilos" is not a fact. It is half of one.

Truss capacity is published as a set of figures that depend on how far it spans between supports and how the weight sits on it. The same truss carries far more over a short span than a long one, because a longer span bends more under the same weight.

How the weight sits matters just as much. A uniformly distributed load — weight spread evenly along the length — is the gentlest case, and it is usually what a published figure describes. A point load, where the weight is concentrated at one place, is much more demanding, and worst of all at the middle of the span, which is exactly where somebody always wants to hang the heavy thing.

A technician does not need to do this arithmetic. What they need is to stop treating a truss as having a capacity, and start hearing it as having a capacity for a particular span, in a particular configuration, calculated by somebody qualified. When a production manager says a truss is rated for something, the useful question is "over what span, and spread how?"

The hardware, by name

You will be asked to fetch these, check these, and report faults on these. Knowing the names is not pedantry — it is the difference between a clear instruction and a dangerous misunderstanding.

A shackle is the U-shaped connector with a removable pin. A round sling is the soft synthetic loop, colour-coded by capacity in most systems. A steel is a wire rope sling, usually with a loop at each end. A chain hoist, often just called a motor, is the machine that lifts, and a chain bag hangs under it to hold the slack chain. A hook clamp attaches a fixture to a truss tube. A span set is a soft sling wrapped around a structural member to make a point.

Two things a technician should know about all of them. Every piece has a rated capacity, and that rating applies to a specific way of using it — a sling used in a basket around a beam carries differently from one hanging straight down or choked around something. And every piece has a pre-use inspection, which is within your competence even when rigging is not.

Secondary safeties, and the thing they are not

Nearly every fixture hung in AV carries a secondary safety: a steel wire loop from the fixture to the structure, alongside the clamp that actually holds it. They are everywhere and they are misunderstood constantly.

A safety is not a second means of support. It is not there to share the load, and it will not hold a fixture in a usable position if the clamp fails. It is fall arrest: its whole job is to stop the fixture reaching the floor if the primary attachment lets go.

That changes how it is fitted. It goes around a structural member, not around the clamp it is backing up, because a safety that depends on the thing it is protecting against is not protecting against anything. It is fitted with as little slack as possible, because a fall it allows is a shock load it then has to survive. And it is rated hardware with a marking, not a length of wire somebody found.

A safety that has caught something comes out of service, for the same reason a sling does.

Wire rope, and how its ends are made

A steel, in rigging, is a length of wire rope with an eye at each end, and it is the workhorse of arena rigging because it is strong, compact, and does not melt in a fire.

Wire rope is made of wires twisted into strands, and strands twisted round a core. The construction is written as two numbers — a 6×19 rope has six strands of about nineteen wires each — and it decides how the rope behaves. More, finer wires make a more flexible rope that tolerates bending better; fewer, thicker wires make a stiffer rope that resists abrasion better.

The eyes are where the rope's strength is decided, because a rope is only as strong as its termination. A swaged or pressed eye has the rope looped back and a metal sleeve pressed on under great force; a Flemish eye splits the rope into two parts, lays them back into each other round the eye, and then presses a sleeve over the join. Made properly by a qualified maker, both keep most of the rope's strength, and they are the terminations used for steels in entertainment rigging. A thimble inside the eye protects the rope from being crushed and bent too tightly by a shackle.

Wire rope clips, sometimes called grips or bulldog clamps, make an eye on site by clamping the tail of the rope back against itself. They keep less of the rope's strength, their count, spacing and tightness all matter, and the U-bolt must sit on the dead tail with the saddle on the live side. They are common in construction rigging and are not used to make production steels in entertainment rigging unless a qualified rigger has specified them. If you find a steel made up with clips in a rigging bin, it goes to the head rigger.

Wire rope is rejected when it shows broken wires, kinks, birdcaging (strands opening up like a cage), crushing or flattening, heat damage, corrosion, or a damaged or slipped sleeve. A kink is permanent: straightening one does not restore the rope.

Round slings, webbing, and edge protection

A round sling is a continuous loop of polyester yarn inside a protective woven cover. It is light, flexible, kind to the things it wraps, and the most common way to wrap truss. In many places it is called a spanset, after one of the companies that made them.

The cover is not the strength; the yarns inside are. That is why a round sling with a cut or a hole in its cover that shows the core yarns is out of service immediately, even if it looks as though only the cover is damaged.

In Europe, round sling colours follow a standard: violet is 1 tonne, green 2, yellow 3, grey 4, red 5, brown 6, blue 8 and orange 10 tonnes and above. Elsewhere, colours are set by the manufacturer and may not match. The label sewn to the sling is what gives its capacity, and a sling whose label is missing or unreadable is out of service whatever colour it is.

Synthetic slings have two enemies that steel does not. The first is edges. A round sling pulled over a sharp edge under load can be cut through in an instant, which is why edge protection — a purpose-made sleeve or corner protector — goes between the sling and any edge. The second is heat. Polyester loses strength when hot and melts in a fire, which is why Actsafe's guidance asks for temperature-resistant components in overhead rigging, and why many venues and codes require a steel or a steel secondary wherever a synthetic sling holds a load over people. Hot lighting fixtures and pyrotechnics near a round sling are both a problem.

Webbing slings, the flat ones, are used much less in entertainment rigging and have the same enemies with less protection.

Chain, STAC chain and master links

Alloy steel chain is tough, resists edges and heat far better than synthetic slings, and is easy to adjust, which makes it common for bridles, lighting pods and anywhere a length must be set precisely.

Rigging chain is graded, and the grade is marked on the links or on a tag. Only alloy lifting chain, of a grade intended for overhead lifting, is used for rigging. Hardware-store chain, even when it looks the same, is not rated for it.

STAC chain, sometimes called deck chain, is a short length of large-link chain with a shackle at the end. Its purpose is adjustment: the shackle can be pinned through any link, so a point's length can be changed in link-sized steps without a new steel. Chain shorteners and clutches do a similar job on chain slings, gripping a link to shorten a leg. IGVW's entry-level qualification teaches a chain sling with a chain shortener as the standard way to fit a secondary suspension on a hoist.

A master link is the large oval ring at the top of a multi-leg chain sling, where all the legs meet and the hook or shackle attaches. It is rated for the whole sling, and the legs must not be hung from anything smaller.

Chain is rejected for stretched links, cracks, nicks and gouges, bent or twisted links, heat damage or discolouration, corrosion, and a missing or illegible grade and capacity tag.

Shackles — which kind, which pin, which way round

A shackle is the most common connector in rigging, and there are enough ways to use one wrongly that it deserves its own section.

Bow shackles have a rounded body that can take a load from more than one direction, which is why they are used where two or more slings meet. Dee shackles, also called chain shackles, have a narrower body and are meant for a straight, inline pull.

Screw pin shackles have a pin that screws into one ear. They are quick, and they can unscrew if the pin is rotated by a rope or sling moving across it. On any shackle that will stay in the air, the screw pin is moused: a length of soft wire or a cable tie threaded through the hole in the pin's head and round the body, so the pin cannot turn. ICOPER lists mousing shackles among its lifting rules. Bolt-type shackles have a bolt, a nut and a split pin, cannot unscrew by accident, and are used where a shackle is permanent or could be rotated.

A screw pin is tightened by hand until it is fully seated, then backed off no more than it needs to be to align the mousing hole. It is never tightened with a spanner, which can distort the ears, and never left partly screwed in.

Load a shackle along its centre line. A shackle pulled sideways — side loading — loses a large share of its capacity, and the manufacturer's chart shows how much. Slings go on the bow; the pin goes on the eye of a steel, a hook or a single point, so that nothing slides along it.

A shackle is rejected for a bent body or pin, a pin that will not seat fully, damaged threads, wear at the crown or on the pin, an opened-up body, cracks, heat damage, or a missing or illegible capacity marking. A replacement pin must be the manufacturer's matching pin; a bolt from a bin is not a shackle pin.

Clamps, eyebolts, turnbuckles and trim chain

The rest of the rigging bin is full of smaller hardware with the same rule as everything else: it has a rated capacity, and that capacity is for a particular way of using it.

Beam clamps grip the flange of a steel beam to make a point without wrapping it. They are rated for a range of flange widths and thicknesses and for a direction of pull, usually straight down, and they are only used on the flange sizes they are marked for. Truss clamps and pipe couplers join a fixture, a pipe or a piece of truss to a tube; half-couplers and hook clamps are rated very differently from each other, and a hook clamp that holds a fixture is not a point for anything else.

Eyebolts are rated for a straight pull along their axis. Pulled at an angle, a plain eyebolt loses much of its capacity, which is why they are fitted with the eye aligned to the pull or replaced with a swivel hoist ring where the pull cannot be straight.

Turnbuckles, or rigging screws, adjust the length of a line by turning a threaded body. They are used for fine trim and for tensioning, and they are secured once set — locked with lock nuts, wire or a pin — because vibration can unwind them. Trim chain used to set a length is secured the same way, and Actsafe's guidance names both.

Across all of it, two principles from the same guidance apply. Connections are positive: a connection that cannot come apart without somebody deliberately undoing it, like a moused shackle or a locked carabiner, rather than one that relies on friction, gravity or a hook's shape. And components are compatible: a shackle whose pin fits the eye, a hook whose throat fits the link, a clamp matched to the tube. A connection between two rated parts that do not fit each other has no rating.

Markings, certificates and traceability

Every piece of rigging hardware should say what it is and what it can carry, and a rigger reads that before using it.

Forged hardware like shackles is marked on the body with the manufacturer, the working load limit and often the grade. Slings carry a sewn or attached label with the WLL, the material, the length and usually a serial number or batch code. Chain carries a grade marking and a tag. Hoists carry a plate with their capacity, speed and serial number, and truss is identified by its manufacturer and model, often with a serial number on each section.

Traceability means that each piece can be linked to its records: when it was made, its certificate, when it was inspected and by whom, and any repairs. ICOPER and ANSI ES1.18 both expect it. On a well-run system, inspection records show every sling, shackle, hoist and truss section with its last inspection, and a piece with no record is treated as a piece with no inspection.

Anything without a legible marking is out of service. So is custom-made hardware nobody can vouch for: ANSI ES1.18 expects custom hardware to be designed by a qualified person or proof tested to twice its rated capacity, and a bracket somebody made in a workshop is neither until it has been shown to be.

Making a point on a beam

A rigging point on an arena beam is built at height by an up rigger, from parts sent up by a ground rigger, and it follows a pattern you will see on almost every arena call.

The basic point is a basket: a steel passed over the beam, both eyes brought down and joined with a shackle below the flange. The sling angle of that basket depends on how wide the beam is and how long the steel is, and a steel too short for the beam makes a flat, wide angle with high tension in both legs. Where the steel passes over the edges of the flange, packing or protection keeps it from being bent sharply and damaged.

From the shackle below the beam, a length of STAC chain or a further steel brings the point down to the height the plot calls for, and the hoist hook goes on the end. On a bridle, two such points on two beams each send down a leg, and the legs meet at a shackle or ring at the apex.

The ground rigger's side of this is as exact as the up rigger's. The plot says what each point is made of — which steels, how long, which shackles — and the ground rigger assembles each set to that list, checks every item, attaches it to the hand line and sends it up. They then watch the hand line and the zone, and when the up rigger calls the point ready, they bring in the hoist.

A synthetic round sling in a basket does the same job and is common on truss and in theatres. In arenas, many venue rules require steel on the beam because of fire and edges, and where a round sling is used a steel is often added alongside it.

Building and flying a bridle

A bridle is how an arena puts a point where the plot wants one and the steel does not have one. Two legs run from points on two beams and meet at an apex, and the hoist hangs from the apex. The maths chapter shows why the legs pull harder than half the load. This section is how a crew actually builds one — the part a ground rigger is doing from the first arena call.

It starts on paper. The plot gives each bridle its point identifier, the two beams it hangs from, the length of each leg, the hardware in each leg, and where the apex must end up. Those numbers were worked out by the head rigger for that geometry, and the crew builds exactly what they say.

The legs are built on the floor. Each leg is a steel, or a steel and a length of STAC chain, with a shackle at the top to join the basket on the beam and a shackle at the bottom. Both legs join at the apex — a shackle, or a ring or master link rated for both legs together. The ground rigger lays the bridle out on the floor beside its mark, with the legs pointing towards their beams, checks every piece against the plot, and counts the chain links on each leg, because that count is the leg length.

Then it goes up in halves. Each up rigger makes a basket on their beam, as for any point, and calls for their leg. The ground rigger sends each leg up on its own hand line while keeping hold of the apex, so the two legs cannot swing into each other or into anything else. Each up rigger shackles their leg to their basket, moused, and calls it made.

With both legs on, the apex hangs free, and it should hang directly over its mark on the floor. The ground rigger checks that with a plumb line dropped from the apex, or a laser from the mark. An apex that is off its mark is telling the crew that something is not as the plot said: a leg with the wrong number of links, a basket made on the wrong side of a beam, or the wrong beam. It is reported to the head rigger, and nobody shortens or lengthens a leg to pull the apex across. Moving a shackle a few links on one leg does move the apex, and it also changes the angle and the tension in both legs. That new geometry is a new calculation, and it is the head rigger's.

Only when the apex is on its mark does the hoist go on. From there the bridle is a point like any other: the hoist hangs from the apex, the load is lifted in the usual sequence, and the secondary suspension, where the plot calls for one, is taken to the beams separately from the legs it is backing up.

Two things about the hardware are easy to get wrong. Every piece in a leg must be rated for the tension in that leg, not for half the load, because at any real spread each leg carries more than half. And the apex hardware must be rated for both legs pulling on it at their angle — a shackle loaded by two legs spread wide is loaded across its body, so the plot usually specifies a bow shackle or a ring there, and that is what goes on.

When hardware goes out of service

Common rejection criteria. The manufacturer's instructions and the applicable standard give the full list for each item.

Round sling colours under the European standard

• Violet 1 t, green 2 t, yellow 3 t, grey 4 t, red 5 t, brown 6 t, blue 8 t, orange 10 t and above.
• Outside Europe, colours are set by the manufacturer. The label is what counts.

Shackle habits

• Bow shackles where several slings meet; dee shackles for a straight, inline pull.
• Slings on the bow, the pin on a single eye or hook.
• Screw pins hand-tight, fully seated, and moused if the shackle stays in the air.
• Never load a shackle sideways, and never replace its pin with a bolt.

How to do it

1. Find the bridle on the plot — point identifier, both beams, the length and hardware of each leg, and the apex mark.
2. Lay out each leg on the floor beside the mark, pointing towards its beam, and check every steel, chain length and shackle against the plot.
3. Count the chain links on each leg and confirm the count matches the plot.
4. Join both legs at the apex with the shackle or ring the plot specifies, and mouse every screw pin.
5. Send each leg up on its own hand line to its up rigger, keeping control of the apex so the legs cannot swing or tangle.
6. When both up riggers call their legs made, check the apex hangs directly over its mark with a plumb line or laser.
7. If the apex is off its mark, stop and tell the head rigger. Do not change a leg to move it.
8. With the apex on its mark, attach the hoist and fit the secondary suspension as the plot shows before the load is lifted.

What goes wrong

Truss

Almost everything flown on a live event hangs from truss: lighting, video, speakers, drapes, signage. Truss is an aluminium structure made of tubes joined in a triangulated pattern, light for its strength, and it arrives in sections that bolt or pin together on the floor.

A new rigger spends more time building, slinging and inspecting truss than doing anything else. This chapter is how to do each of those properly.

The kinds of truss, and how the sections join

Truss is described by its shape, its size and its connection system.

The shape is the number of main tubes, called chords. Ladder truss has two chords side by side, joined by cross members, and is flat. Triangle truss has three chords. Box or square truss has four. More chords make a truss stiffer and stronger, and box truss is what you will meet most often on shows of any size.

The size is the distance between the chords. The sizes found in nearly every rental warehouse are around 30 centimetres and around 52 centimetres, which in North America are called twelve-inch and twenty-and-a-half-inch box truss. Bigger sizes exist for long spans and heavy loads. The diagonal and cross tubes between the chords are called braces or diagonals, and the places where they meet a chord are nodes, also called panel points.

The connection system decides how sections join. Conical or spigot connectors push a conical coupler from one section into the next and lock it with pins and safety clips; they are fast and tolerant. Fork end connectors have a fork on one section and a tongue on the next, joined with a single pin through each chord, and the sections must be the right way round. Plate connectors bolt flat plates together with nuts and bolts of a specified grade, tightened to a specified torque.

The pins, clips and bolts are part of the truss. A spigot joint made with a random bolt instead of the manufacturer's pin, a missing safety clip, or a plate joint made with bolts of the wrong grade is not the truss in the load table. IGVW teaches the pros and cons of each connector system for exactly this reason: each one has its own ways of being assembled wrongly.

Different manufacturers' truss, even when it looks identical, is not mixed in one span unless both manufacturers say it can be.

Building truss on the floor

Truss is assembled at ground level, which is the first and best form of fall protection there is: every connection that can be made on the floor is a connection nobody has to make at height.

Lay the sections out to the plan, on the floor or on truss dollies, with the right sections in the right order and the right way up. Most truss has a top and a bottom, and some sections are made to take loads at particular places. Check each section before it is joined — the inspection in the next section takes a minute and saves a lift.

Join the sections fully. Spigots are pushed home, pins fitted all the way through and their clips fitted; fork pins fitted and clipped; plate bolts fitted with their washers and nuts and tightened to the specified torque. Do not force a joint that will not go together. A section that will not align is bent, damaged or the wrong section.

Handle truss as a structure, not as scaffolding. Do not drop it, drag it, throw it onto a stack, or stand on it. Protect the connectors at the ends, which are the parts that decide whether the next joint fits; ANSI E1.2 names protecting end connections and not dragging or dropping truss among its handling rules. In transport, truss is stacked with spacers or in purpose-made carts so sections do not rub and dent each other.

Once the fixtures and cable are on, the truss is a loaded structure even at head height. Weight goes where the plan puts it, cable is dressed along the chords and tied off to them, and nothing is added because there happens to be room.

Inspecting truss before use

ANSI E1.2 describes two levels of truss inspection. A frequent inspection happens before each use, is done by the people using the truss, and needs no written record. A periodic inspection happens at least once a year, is done by a qualified person, and is recorded. The frequent one is yours.

Look along every chord for dents, bends, abrasion and cracks. A dent in a main chord is serious, because the chords carry the load. Look at every diagonal and cross brace for bends, dents, cracks and anything missing. Look at the welds where braces meet chords, all of them, for cracks — cracks often show as a fine line in the paint or anodising, or a line of dirt.

Look at the connectors. Spigots and couplers should be undeformed, holes should be round rather than worn oval, plates should be flat, and pins should be straight and match. Check that the fasteners are the right ones and in good condition.

Then look at the whole section. Sight along it for twist and bend. A section that is not straight and square is damaged, even if no single part of it looks wrong.

A damaged section is taken out of use immediately, marked so nobody puts it back in, and reported. Repairs are done only by a qualified person, and usually by the manufacturer. If you are not sure whether a dent matters, it is out until somebody qualified says otherwise.

Slinging truss

How truss is attached to a hoist or a point is set by the manufacturer, and the load table assumes it. There are still principles that hold across nearly all of them.

Sling at a node. The node is where the braces meet the chord, and the truss is designed to take load there. A sling between nodes loads the chord where it is weakest.

Wrap the chords, not the braces. A sling round a diagonal alone puts the whole load into a tube designed to brace, and it can bend or tear out. Slings go round the chords at the node, in the pattern the manufacturer shows — a basket round the top chords, or a wrap that includes the bottom chords, depending on the truss and how it is loaded.

Keep the sling off sharp edges and hot surfaces, fit a steel where the rules require one, and keep the sling angle within what the manufacturer allows: a sling spread wide across a large box truss is a basket with a wide angle and high tension.

Bring the sling to the hoist hook with a shackle rather than hanging it straight in the hook's throat, so the sling is not bent round a small radius and the hook latch closes properly.

And IGVW's entry-level syllabus adds two methods a rigger should know alongside the basket and the choke: beam clamps for making a point on a steel flange, and cast-in anchor channel, the slotted rails built into some concrete ceilings that take rated fittings.

Ways to pick truss from a hoist

The hoist is above, the truss is below, and something has to join them. A few arrangements cover almost every rig, and each one puts the load into the truss in a different way.

A top-chord basket is the everyday pick for box truss hung below a hoist. A round sling passes under the two top chords at a node, both eyes come up to a shackle, and the shackle goes on the hoist hook. The legs are short and nearly vertical, so the sling angle costs little.

A four-chord basket passes the sling under all four chords, so the truss section sits in the sling rather than hanging from its top. It is used where the manufacturer calls for it, often for heavy loads hung from the bottom chords, and the sling has to be long enough that its legs do not spread wide across the width of the truss.

A bridled pick takes one hoist to two nodes. Two slings, or two legs of one sling, run from the hook to nodes either side, so one hoist carries the truss at two places instead of one. It spreads the load along the truss, and it brings back everything in the maths chapter about sling angles: the further apart the two nodes, the harder each leg pulls, and the more the legs squeeze the truss between them.

A spreader beam, or lifting beam, is a short rated bar hung from the hook with a sling at each end dropping straight down to the truss. Because the legs hang vertically, there is no sling angle and no squeeze, which is why spreader beams are used on long, heavy or delicate picks such as LED walls.

Whichever arrangement is used, two things are the same. The pick is at nodes, round the chords the manufacturer names. And on a hoist that needs one, the secondary suspension is a separate steel from independent structure, wrapped round the chords beside the pick and made taut once the truss is at trim — never a second sling on the same hook.

Loads on truss — what the table assumes

A truss load table assumes the truss is loaded the way the table describes, and real rigs rarely match it exactly. Knowing where they differ is what lets you ask the right question.

Cable is not a UDL. ANSI E1.2 points out that a multicore running along a truss gets heavier towards the end where it drops to the floor, because more cable is joined to it there. A long cable run is a load that grows along the span.

Loads are often off centre. A truss loaded on one side, with fixtures hung on the front chords only, tries to twist, and a table for loads hung symmetrically from the bottom chords may not describe that.

People change everything. A follow spot chair, a climber moving along a truss, or fall protection anchored to a truss puts loads into it the table knows nothing about, including the large force if a fall is arrested.

Outdoors and in draughty rooms, wind loads a truss sideways, and anything flat hung from it — a banner, a screen, an LED wall — catches the wind like a sail. That is covered further in the chapter on the rigging process.

Truss is also used standing up. Ground support systems use towers and sleeve blocks to hold a roof or a grid from the floor, with outriggers and ballast against tipping, and they have their own manufacturer's instructions, engineering and standards, such as ANSI E1.21 for outdoor structures. Building one is a specialist task led by a qualified supervisor, and the ground it stands on is part of the calculation.

Truss at a glance

The terms on every truss plan and load table.

How to do it

1. Identify the section — manufacturer, model and length — and confirm it is the section the plan calls for, the right way up.
2. Sight along each chord for dents, bends, abrasion and cracks.
3. Check every brace and cross member for bends, dents, cracks and anything missing.
4. Check every weld where a brace meets a chord for cracks.
5. Check the connectors — spigots, forks or plates — for deformation, worn or oval holes and damage, and check the pins, clips or bolts are the correct ones and sound.
6. Sight along the whole section for twist and bend.
7. If anything is wrong or you are not sure, mark the section out of service, set it aside and tell the head rigger.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer before checking.

Chain Hoists

The electric chain hoist is the machine that makes modern touring possible. It lifts a truss full of fixtures, a line array or an LED wall from the floor to trim in a few minutes, and holds it there for the show.

It is also a machine with a motor, a brake, a gearbox and a length of load chain, running on three-phase power, lifting weight over people's heads. This chapter is how it works, how it is checked, and how it is run.

What is inside a chain hoist

An electric chain hoist has a small number of parts, and each one has a job worth knowing.

The motor turns a gearbox, and the gearbox turns a toothed wheel called the load sheave or lift wheel, which grips the chain link by link and pulls it through. The load chain is a specially hardened, precisely sized chain made for that hoist; it is not interchangeable with any other chain. The slack chain feeds into a chain bag, which has to be big enough for the whole length of chain.

The brake holds the load when the motor stops. On most hoists it is spring-applied and released electrically, so if the power fails the brake closes on its own and the load stays where it is. Hoists designed to hold loads over people often have two brakes.

A slip clutch sits in the drive and slips if the hoist is badly overloaded or pulls against something solid, protecting the gears. It is a protective device for the hoist, not a load limit for the rig, and it is never something to test on purpose.

Limit switches stop the hoist at the ends of its travel: an upper limit before the hook runs into the body, and a lower limit before the chain runs out. Setting them is a maintenance job done to the manufacturer's instructions.

And there is a hook at the end of the chain, with a safety latch across its throat, and a suspension point on the body — a second hook or an eye.

Many hoists are also double-fall: the chain runs down from the body, through a pulley in a bottom hook block, and back up to the body. That halves the speed and roughly doubles the capacity, and it adds a check: the bottom block must not have flipped over and twisted the two falls of chain round each other, called a capsized block.

Climbing and fixed, and why it matters where the body is

A chain hoist can be rigged two ways up, and both are common.

Rigged fixed, or hook down, the body hangs from the point at the top and the hook comes down to the load. The chain bag hangs under the body, high up. The load rises towards the body.

Rigged climbing, or body up the chain, the chain's hook is attached to the point at the top and the body is attached to the load. When the hoist runs, the body climbs up its own chain, taking the load with it, and the slack chain hangs from the bag below the body. Arena rigging uses this a great deal: the hoist, its control cable and its chain bag stay near the load, so the heavy power and control cables do not have to be run up to the steel, and the hoist can be reached from the truss at its low trim.

Either way, the whole hoist — body, chain and bag — is part of the load on the point, which is why the maths chapter counted it. And either way, the chain bag must hang clear of anything it could snag, and the chain must feed into it freely.

Hoist classes, and loads over people

Not every chain hoist is allowed to hold a load over people without extra protection, and the difference is set by how the hoist was designed.

In Europe, the classes most often named come from Germany and are now described by the IGVW's SQP2 and EN 17206. A D8 hoist is a standard hoist designed to lift loads; it may hold a load over people only if a secondary suspension is fitted to catch the load if the hoist fails. A D8+ hoist is built to hold loads over people without that secondary: it has a second brake, a higher design factor on the parts that carry the load, and its load chain is rated with a design factor of at least 8:1. A C1 hoist is designed to move loads over people as well as hold them, and adds further protection such as overload shutdown. You will still hear the older German names BGV-D8 and BGV-C1.

North America describes powered hoists through ANSI E1.6-1, and does not use the same letters. The principle is the same: whether a hoist can hold or move a load over people depends on its design, its rating and the rules where it is working, and a hoist that is not designed for it is backed up by a secondary suspension or has nobody under it.

For a new rigger, the working rule is to know which class of hoist is on the rig, and what that means for secondaries. The plate on the hoist and the rental company's paperwork say which it is.

Power, control, and the direction a hoist runs

Chain hoists for entertainment run on three-phase power and are controlled from a controller, usually a rack or case with a switch or button for each hoist, a master control, and an emergency stop.

There are two ways the controller can work. In direct control, the controller switches the hoist's main power itself: pressing up sends mains power down the cable to the motor. In low-voltage control, the hoist has its own contactors, and the controller sends a low-voltage signal telling it which way to run. The two kinds cannot be mixed, and connecting a hoist to the wrong kind of controller is a serious fault.

With three-phase power, the direction a motor turns depends on the order of the phases. Swap two of them and the motor runs backwards. On a direct-control hoist that means pressing up sends the load down — and something worse. The limit switches are wired to stop the motor in a particular direction, so a hoist running backwards may drive straight past its limit. That is why ICOPER and ANSI ES1.18 both require the direction of motor rotation to be checked, why the rigging power person checks every hoist before it takes a load, and why the first run of any hoist is a short bump with nothing at risk.

The controller has an emergency stop that cuts power to every hoist at once, and it is tested before the call begins. Hoist controls are hold-to-run: the hoist moves only while the button is held, and stops when it is released.

Making power for the hoists — connecting to the venue's supply and the distribution — belongs to a qualified electrician or the rigging power person. A new rigger checks cables and connectors for damage and keeps them to the cable plan, and does not open a hoist or a controller.

Checking a hoist before it lifts

A chain hoist is checked before every use. The checks take a couple of minutes, and the standard for electric chain hoists, ANSI E1.6-2, and the IGVW's entry syllabus both expect them.

The hook: the throat has not opened up or bent, the latch is present and springs closed, and the hook turns freely if it is a swivel hook. A hook whose latch does not close is out of service, not a hook to be careful with.

The chain: run your eye along the length that will be used, looking for nicks, gouges, stretched or bent links, rust and lack of lubrication. Check that the chain is not twisted as it comes out of the body, and on a double-fall hoist, that the bottom block has not capsized. IGVW's syllabus puts it simply: run the chain through correctly.

The chain bag: attached properly, undamaged, big enough, and with the chain feeding into it freely rather than piled on the edge.

The body and suspension: no cracks, no missing fasteners, the suspension hook or eye undamaged.

The cables and connectors: no cuts, crushed sections or damaged plugs.

Then the run test, with the rigging power person: a short bump up and down with the hoist's number on the controller, confirming that this hoist moves, that it moves the way the button says, that it stops when the button is released, and that the brake holds without the load creeping.

Anything wrong is tagged out on the hoist itself and reported. A hoist that has been jerked, shock loaded or run into something comes out of service the same way.

Running hoists — bump, float, level, trim

Running a lift on chain hoists follows a sequence, and each step exists to catch a particular problem before it becomes a dangerous one.

Bump. Every hoist is run briefly to confirm it is the hoist on that channel and that it goes the right way. Slack chain is taken up evenly so every hoist starts the lift together.

Float. The load is lifted just clear of the floor — a few centimetres — and stopped. Everyone checks what they are responsible for: every sling, shackle and connection, the chain coming out of every hoist, the chain bags, the cables, and that nothing is still attached to the floor. ICOPER calls this verifying integrity after initial floating. A fault found at float height is a problem; the same fault found at twelve metres is an emergency.

Raise, watching level. The load goes up with spotters watching it from where they can see it, and the operator watching the spotters. Hoists do not all run at exactly the same speed, so the load drifts out of level as it rises, and the operator stops and corrects it rather than letting it get worse. On an indeterminate rig, a hoist that runs ahead is a hoist taking extra load.

Stop before trim, then trim. The load is stopped short of its final height, each hoist is then run in small steps to the trim height on the plot, and the load is levelled. Load cells, where fitted, show whether the points are sharing the load as planned.

Controlled stops throughout. A hoist is stopped by releasing the button, not by slamming the emergency stop in normal operation, because an abrupt stop is a dynamic load. The emergency stop is for emergencies.

And respect the hoist's duty cycle. An electric motor heats up with each start and each minute of running, and hoists are rated for how much of that they can do in an hour. Inching a truss up and down repeatedly to get it perfect can overheat a hoist. Trim with purpose, and let the head rigger know if a hoist feels hot or slow.

Load cells

A load cell is a sensor that measures force. In rigging it is fitted between the point and the hoist, or between the hoist and the load, and it reports how much that point is actually carrying to a display at the controller.

On a two-point rig, a load cell confirms the weights were counted correctly. On an indeterminate rig of three or more points, it is the only practical way to know how the load is shared, because the share depends on trim that nobody can judge by eye. A system with load cells can show the operator every point at once during a lift, and alarm if any point goes over a set limit or suddenly goes slack.

ICOPER recommends load monitoring and highly recommends it for multi-point lifts and dynamic loads; ANSI ES1.18 highly recommends load verification equipment such as load cells. Australia's arena rigging unit includes the use of load monitoring equipment in what a rigger must know.

What a new rigger does with them is simple and important: fit them in the order and place the plan says, keep their cables dressed, and tell the operator immediately if a display shows something unexpected.

Manual hoists, and the maintenance you do not do

Not every hoist is electric. A hand chain hoist, or chain block, lifts a load by pulling on a separate loop of hand chain, slowly and with a lot of chain. A lever hoist, sometimes called a ratchet hoist or come-along, pulls chain through by working a lever back and forth, and is used for short pulls and tensioning rather than lifting to height. Both have their own ratings, their own inspections, and their own standards — ANSI E1.67 in North America — and neither is a substitute for a powered hoist rated for the job.

Chain hoists also need maintenance, and some of it is tempting to do on site. Setting limit switches, adjusting brakes, replacing load chain and replacing cables all have manufacturer's procedures and are done by people trained on that hoist, with the work recorded. A new rigger does not adjust any of them. A hoist whose limit is wrong, whose brake slips, or whose chain is damaged is tagged out and goes back for maintenance.

Hoist terms and classes

The words on a hoist plate, a rental sheet and a rigging call.

What goes wrong

Plots, Mark-Out and the Plan

Every rigging call starts with a drawing. The rigging plot says where every point goes, what it carries, how high it hangs and what it is made of, and the venue's drawings say what the building can take. Before anything is lifted, somebody has to turn those drawings into chalk marks on the floor in exactly the right places.

This chapter is how to read the plan and how to put it on the floor.

Reading a rigging plot

A rigging plot is a plan view of the rig — as if looking down from above — drawn over the venue's floor and steel. ICOPER sets out what a good one contains, and once you know the parts, any company's plot is readable.

The title block, usually in a corner, names the event, the venue, the designer, the drawing number, the scale, and the version and date. Check the version before anything else. Plots change right up to the call, and marking out from yesterday's version is a common and entirely avoidable mistake.

The datum is the reference point every measurement is taken from, with two axis lines through it at right angles. In an arena it is often the centre of the arena floor or the centre line of the stage crossed with a line such as the downstage edge. ANSI ES1.18 asks that every department agrees on the same origin, because a lighting plot and a rigging plot measured from different places will not meet in the air.

Each point has a unique identifier — a letter and number such as A12 or US-3 — and a position given as distances from the datum along each axis. A legend explains the symbols: each point symbol usually shows the hoist type and capacity, and sometimes its speed and chain length.

The plot shows the required hook height or trim height — how high the hook or the bottom of the truss must be — and it shows the loads. A point load table lists every point with its static load, its peak dynamic load if moving, and the total. Bridles are drawn with their legs to the beams they hang from, and the leg lengths and hardware are listed.

And the plot shows power: where the hoist distribution is, what voltage and connector it needs, and how the control cables run.

Venue drawings, capacities and obstructions

The rigging plot says what the show wants. The venue's drawings say what the building allows, and a rig has to satisfy both.

Venue rigging drawings show the structural steel: which beams can be rigged from, their heights above the floor, their sizes, and the load each beam or each point on it can carry. Many venues publish a maximum per point and a maximum total for the whole roof, and some have zones with different limits or where rigging is not allowed at all.

They also show obstructions, and so does looking up. Air-conditioning ducts, sprinkler pipes, catwalks, scoreboards, house lighting and speaker clusters all sit in the space the rig wants, and a point that looks clear on the plot can have a duct running under the beam. ETCP's rigger exam includes interpreting facility plans — structural, electrical and mechanical — for exactly this reason.

A new rigger reads venue drawings to find where they are and to understand why a point is where it is. Deciding whether a point is allowed, and what to do when the plan and the venue disagree, belongs to the head rigger and the venue. When the steel above a mark does not match the drawing, that is a question to raise before anyone climbs.

Marking out the floor

Mark-out puts every point on the plot onto the floor directly below where it will be in the air, so the up riggers can position each point accurately and the ground riggers know where to build and where to bring each hoist.

Find the datum on the floor first, and mark it clearly. Then mark the two axis lines from it: usually one running the length of the room and one across it. Every point is then measured out along one axis and then along the other at a right angle — so many metres along the centre line, then so many metres across.

The right angle matters more than it looks. A crossing line that is two degrees off puts a point thirty metres away more than a metre out of place. The classic way to set a right angle with only a tape is the 3-4-5 triangle: measure 3 units along one line from the corner, 4 units along the other, and adjust the second line until the diagonal between those two marks is exactly 5 units. Scaled up to 6, 8 and 10 metres, or 9, 12 and 15, it is accurate across a large floor. A laser measure or a laser square does the same job faster, and many riggers use both, checking one with the other.

Pull tapes taut and straight, measure from the same datum every time rather than from the previous mark so errors do not add up, and check long diagonals between marks on a square layout. Mark each point with its identifier — chalk, spray chalk or tape, whatever the venue allows — and often with its hook height.

When an up rigger is above the mark, they drop a plumb line or use a laser to put the point exactly over it. A point directly above its mark hangs its load straight down; a point that is not is a point pulling sideways.

The paperwork around a rig

A properly run rig has paper — or its digital equivalent — beyond the plot, and a new rigger meets all of it.

A risk assessment, called a job hazard analysis in some places, identifies what could go wrong on this call and what has been done about each hazard. A safe work method statement, or method statement, describes how the work will be done step by step. Australia's arena rigging unit expects an approved weight-load plan and a safe work method statement before rigging starts; ANSI ES1.18 expects a risk assessment, a rigging plan and a fall protection and rescue plan. Read the parts that apply to your role, and sign where you are asked to sign only once you have read them.

Equipment has records: the inspection and maintenance history of every hoist, sling and truss section. Faulty equipment is tagged and quarantined, and the tag is the record that stops it being used.

And afterwards, a post-production report records what happened: who was on the crew, the checks made, any incidents or near misses, and any equipment that was damaged, repaired or altered. ICOPER lists what it should contain. A near miss that is written down is how the next rig avoids it.

What is on a rigging plot

The parts ICOPER expects a plot to carry, and what each one tells you.

Setting a right angle with a tape

• Measure 3 along one line and 4 along the other; the diagonal between the marks must be exactly 5.
• Scale it up for accuracy on a big floor — 6, 8 and 10 metres, or 9, 12 and 15.

How to do it

1. Confirm the plot's version and date, and find the datum it uses.
2. Mark the datum on the floor and set out the first axis line through it.
3. Set out the second axis line at a right angle using a 3-4-5 triangle scaled up, or a laser square, and check it.
4. For each point, measure from the datum along the first axis to the point's coordinate, then at a right angle along the second axis to its other coordinate.
5. Mark the point with its identifier, and its hook height if the crew uses it.
6. Measure each point from the datum, not from the last mark, and check diagonals between marks on a regular layout.
7. Report any mark that lands under an obstruction or does not match the steel above it.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer before checking.

The Rigging Process & Safety

How rigging is done safely — and the absolute role of qualification.

The rigging process

Rigging follows a careful process (carried out by qualified riggers): planning the rig (what's hung, where, weights, points, hardware — often with a rig plot/plan), checking the points and structure, rigging the loads (attaching everything correctly with the right hardware), inspecting the rig (verifying everything is correct and safe), and signing off before any load is trusted or anyone works under it. This methodical, checked process is how rigging is done safely — never rushed or skipped. Rigging follows a careful, checked, planned process by qualified riggers.

This process (plan, check, rig, inspect, sign off) embodies rigging's safety-critical nature — everything is planned, done correctly, and verified before being trusted. Qualified riggers follow this rigor. Safe rigging is a careful, verified process, not improvisation.

Qualification, certification, and safety

The single most important thing about rigging is that it must be done by qualified, trained, and (where required) certified riggers, under proper supervision, following all safety regulations. Rigging is too dangerous for the untrained — it requires real, hands-on, accredited training (such as ETCP certification), deep knowledge, experience, and qualification. This book builds awareness and understanding, but does NOT qualify anyone to rig. Anyone doing or overseeing rigging must be properly qualified. Understanding the absolute requirement for qualification is the most important takeaway. Real rigging requires qualified, trained, certified riggers — always.

To be completely clear: this book helps you understand rigging and its seriousness (useful awareness for anyone in AV), but actual rigging — planning, calculating, and executing — must be done by qualified riggers. If you want to rig, get proper accredited training and certification and learn under qualified supervision. Combining what rigging is, loads, points, hardware, and the process is rigging awareness — and the overriding lesson is that rigging requires qualification. This is rigging understood as the safety-critical, qualified discipline it is. Never rig without proper training, qualification, and supervision.

Never under the load, and what an exclusion zone is

This is the rule that prevents the injuries that actually happen in AV, and it costs nothing.

Nobody stands, walks, or works under a suspended load. Not while it is being lifted, not while it is being lowered, not while it is hanging still and somebody is working on it above. Not to grab something quickly. Not because it is only going up a metre.

While rigging is happening overhead, the area below is an exclusion zone: it is marked or called, and it is empty. That means empty of people and also of the things people go to fetch — if a case is under a truss that is being loaded, the case waits.

The awkward part is social, not technical. The zone is usually enforced by somebody calling out, and the temptation when you are busy is to duck through, because it is quick and nothing is moving. Objects that fall from height do not require anything to be moving. A shackle pin dropped from a truss is a serious injury.

Wear the hard hat. Walk round.

Where your competence ends, and who owns what

The most useful thing this book can give you is a clear line.

Rigging — deciding where points go, calculating loads, making attachments to a building's structure, signing off that a system is safe — is done by qualified riggers. In many markets that means formal certification: the Entertainment Technician Certification Program certifies arena and theatre riggers, and many venues and insurers require it. Elsewhere it is regulated differently, but it is regulated everywhere.

What sits inside a technician's competence is real and useful: identifying hardware, inspecting it before use, reporting damage, knowing accurate weights for what you are responsible for, following instructions precisely, keeping the exclusion zone clear, and fitting a fixture and its safety correctly when that is your job and you have been shown how.

What sits outside it is everything involving a decision about load or geometry. Not moving a point. Not lengthening a leg. Not deciding a truss will be fine. Not putting one more fixture on because there is space.

Nobody has ever thought less of a technician for saying "I'm not qualified to do that". A great many people have been hurt because somebody did not say it.

When something looks wrong, stopping is your job

You will at some point notice something that looks wrong: a sling with a cut in it, a safety that is not around anything structural, a load that looks heavier than what was described, somebody under a lift.

Say so immediately, to the rigger or the person running the floor, and plainly: what you saw and where. Not as a question, not as a hint, and not later.

Anybody can stop work. That is not a courtesy extended to senior people; on a properly run show it is an obligation on everyone, and nobody competent will be annoyed by it. If you are wrong, it costs a minute. If you are right, it costs a minute.

The reason this needs saying out loud is that the pressure runs the other way. Everything on a show is behind, everybody is busy, and raising a hand feels like being the person who slowed things down. It is worth knowing in advance that this feeling is normal, that it is wrong, and that the people whose opinion is worth having will think better of you for it — because the alternative is the thing nobody wants to be part of.

Risk assessment and the hierarchy of control

Every rigging call has a risk assessment behind it, and the way hazards are handled in it follows a fixed order of preference that runs through every safety rule you will meet. It is called the hierarchy of control.

First, eliminate the hazard: if nobody has to work at height to make a connection, nobody can fall. Building truss and top rigging on the floor is elimination. Second, substitute something less hazardous. Third, isolate people from the hazard or engineer it out: a barrier around the load hazard zone, guardrails on a platform, a hoist designed to hold loads over people. Fourth, administrative controls: procedures, training, signs, briefings, the rule that nobody walks under a load. Last, personal protective equipment: the helmet, the gloves, the harness.

The order matters because the controls at the top work whether or not anyone remembers them, and the ones at the bottom depend entirely on people doing the right thing every time. A harness is essential when someone is at height, and it is also the last line of defence: the question a rigging plan asks first is whether that person needed to be up there at all.

The same idea appears in fall protection, in the next chapter, as eliminate, prevent, restrain, and only then arrest.

The crew briefing

Before a rigging call starts, the crew is briefed, and the briefing is not a formality. ICOPER gives a checklist of what it should cover, and it is a good description of what you need to leave it knowing.

The hazards on this site today, and the controls. Everybody's role and who they answer to. The sequence and schedule of the work, and any handovers between shifts. The PPE required. How the teams will coordinate. The drawings and where to find them. How communication will work, including radio channels and the words that will be used. And the emergency procedures: how to stop work, how to evacuate, how a rescue will happen if someone is left hanging in a harness, and how faulty equipment is quarantined.

ANSI ES1.18 calls this a toolbox talk and expects the production rigger to lead it. Supervisors are also expected to keep an eye on the crew's physical and mental condition throughout the day, which is the other reason to be at the briefing on time: it is where the people responsible for you see who is there and how they are.

If you missed part of it, say so and get it repeated. If something in it did not make sense, ask. A briefing that leaves anyone guessing has not done its job.

Ground rigger and up rigger — the two halves of a point

A point is made by two people who usually cannot see each other clearly, and it works because each one does their half exactly.

The ground rigger prepares. They assemble each point's hardware to the plot — the steels, shackles, chain and any spreaders — check every item, and lay the sets out by point identifier. ICOPER says the ground rigger checks the assembly before tying it in to the hand line, and that is a real check: the up rigger will build with whatever arrives.

When the up rigger is in position, the ground rigger ties the set to the hand line and sends it up, controlling it so it does not swing into steel, lights or people, and guiding it with a tag line if it needs one. Throughout, the ground rigger keeps the area below the up rigger clear. That is not an extra job; it is the job.

The up rigger makes the point on the steel and, when it is finished and checked, calls it ready — by point identifier, over the radio or clearly by voice — and sends the hand line back down. Only then does the ground rigger bring in the hoist and attach it, and only then does the point take any load.

Everything else follows the same pattern. Nothing goes up that has not been checked on the floor, nothing is loaded that has not been called ready, and nothing moves under anyone.

Hand lines, knots and rope bags

Most hardware reaches the steel on a hand line: a rope lowered by the up rigger, tied on by the ground rigger, and hauled up. It is simple, and it has its own craft.

Before dropping a line, the up rigger calls "Rope!" loudly, and waits for the floor to clear below. Rope is kept in a rope bag at height, so it pays out cleanly instead of falling in a pile or snagging on the steel.

Knots are chosen for what they do. A bowline makes a fixed loop that does not slip or tighten under load and unties easily afterwards, which makes it the standard knot for putting a loop on the end of a hand line or round a bundle. A clove hitch grips a bar or a pipe quickly and adjusts easily; it can work loose, so it is backed up with half hitches when it matters. A figure of eight is a stopper knot at the end of a rope, and tied on a bight makes a secure loop. A sheet bend joins two ropes, including ropes of different thickness. A round turn and two half hitches ties a rope off to a bar or rail under load and can be released under load. ETCP's rigger exam names the bowline, clove hitch, figure eight and sheet bend; IGVW's entry syllabus adds the prusik and double fisherman's for working with personal protective equipment.

A knot reduces a rope's strength, so hand lines are for hauling hardware, not for holding loads in the rig.

Tag lines are ropes tied to a load so somebody on the floor can stop it spinning or swinging into something as it rises. A brailing line pulls a hanging load sideways from its natural position and ties it off, to move it clear of something or into place; because it pulls sideways on the point, it is part of the plan, not something added on the day.

The words and signals on a rigging call

A rigging call is noisy, spread across a large space, and split between people at height and people on the floor. It runs on a small vocabulary that everyone must use the same way, and the briefing confirms which words this crew will use.

"Heads!" — in some places "Headache!" — means something is falling. The response is to protect your head and move away, not to look up to see what it is. "Rope!" means a line is being dropped. "Stand clear" or "clear the area" means get out of the load hazard zone now. "All stop" means every hoist stops and every person stops what they are doing.

On the radio, keep it short and always use identifiers: "Point A12 is ready", "Hoists one to six, standing by". Wait for the channel to be clear, say who you are calling, and confirm instructions back. Several guidance documents ask for noise and distraction around a lift to be kept down, which includes chatter on the channel.

Hand signals are used where voices and radios fail. Crane signals are widely recognised: to hoist, the forearm is held vertical with the index finger pointing up, moving in small horizontal circles; to lower, the arm points down with the index finger pointing down, moving in small circles; to stop, the arm is held out with the palm down and swept back and forth; for emergency stop, both arms are held out, palms down, and swept back and forth. Signals vary between crews and countries, so the ones in use are agreed at the briefing and given only by the person designated to give them — except stop, which anyone can give.

Because anyone can stop a lift. ICOPER says the communication around a lift must be such that anyone nearby can stop it, and a new rigger who sees something wrong and calls stop is doing exactly what the system is built for.

The lift — zone, spotters, float, trim, secure

A lift is the moment the rig carries its load, and ANSI ES1.18 and ICOPER describe it in very similar steps.

Establish the load hazard zone: the area a load, or anything falling from it, could reach. It is marked with barriers, signs or tape, and announced out loud before each lift. Nobody is inside it except the people who must be there to attach, detach or guide the load, and during the lift itself not even them.

Check before the lift. Every connection has been checked by the person responsible for it, and the capacity of every part matches the plan. The flight path — the space the load will travel through — has been looked at from the floor for anything it could hit.

Position spotters. The hoist operator often cannot see the whole load, and one person cannot watch many hoists from one spot, so spotters stand where they can see what the operator cannot, with radios and the authority to stop.

Then float, check, raise while keeping level, stop short, and trim, exactly as the chain hoist chapter described. Once the load is at trim, the load share is verified, the connections are checked again, and the rig is secured: secondary suspensions fitted where the plan calls for them, and a notice put at the hoist controller saying secondaries are fitted.

Only then is the load hazard zone released, and people allowed back under the rig.

Secondary suspensions, done properly

The earlier chapter explained what a secondary safety on a fixture is for. On a rig, secondary suspensions do the same job at a larger scale: they are there to catch a truss, a hoist or a speaker array if its primary suspension fails.

The codes agree on how they are fitted. A secondary must be capable of holding at least what the primary point holds — ICOPER says its capacity is at least that of the primary. It is made taut, or as near taut as possible, because slack is a fall and a fall is a shock load. Where possible it goes to independent structure, not to the same clamp or the same piece of steel as the primary. And it is installed in a way that keeps the time people spend at height to a minimum.

A secondary is fitted after the load is at trim, and removed before the load is moved. This is the step most likely to go wrong. A hoist run up or down with a secondary still attached either loads the secondary until something breaks, or lowers the load until the secondary takes it with a jolt. That is why ICOPER and ANSI ES1.18 both require a warning notice at the control point whenever secondaries are fitted, and why the de-rig sequence always starts with removing them and removing the notice.

Both codes also say something worth understanding: secondaries are not the ideal. A rig designed with redundancy — enough points and capacity that the loss of one does not drop the load — is preferred over one that relies on secondaries. Where hoists designed to hold loads over people are used, secondaries may not be needed at all. Whether this rig needs them is the head rigger's decision, and the new rigger's job is to fit, check and remove them exactly as planned.

Dropped objects

Most injuries on a rig do not come from a rig collapsing. They come from something small falling a long way: a shackle pin, a spanner, a radio, a phone from a shirt pocket.

The controls are simple and they work. Tools used at height are tethered with lanyards to the rigger or to structure. Pockets are emptied before climbing, and phones and radios are clipped or zipped in. Small hardware goes up and comes down in a closed bag, not loose in a hand. Shackle pins are fitted and moused before anything is let go. And the area below is kept clear, because a dropped object is only an injury if somebody is standing where it lands.

When something is dropped, call "Heads!" immediately, whether or not you think anyone is below.

Fatigue, rest, and never alone at height

Rigging calls start early and end late, and loads and heights do not become any more forgiving at the end of a long day. Tired riggers make the mistakes that rules are written to prevent.

ANSI ES1.18 asks for rest periods to be planned into rigging work and says plainly that rigging work at height must not be performed alone. Actsafe lists fatigue among the hazards of overhead rigging. Supervisors are expected to watch for it, and each rigger is expected to say when they have reached a point where they are no longer working safely.

Look after the basics: eat, drink water, take the breaks you are given, and dress for the heat in a roof space or the cold of an open loading dock. Heat in an arena's steel on a summer afternoon is a real hazard in its own right.

Weather, wind and outdoor rigging

Outdoors, and sometimes indoors, the environment adds loads to a rig that the plot's static weights do not include.

Wind is the largest. Anything flat — a banner, a scrim, a screen, an LED wall — is a sail, and a large LED wall flown outdoors can see sideways forces from wind that dwarf its weight. Rain and snow add weight and make surfaces slippery, and lightning makes a metal structure a hazard. Indoors, a large loading door opened on a windy day can move air through an arena strongly enough to swing a flown load.

Outdoor rigs therefore have weather procedures with trigger points: at a stated wind speed, work stops; at a higher one, loads are lowered or the show stops. ICOPER expects these procedures to be written down in advance, covering wind, rain, snow, ice, flooding, lightning and more. ANSI E1.21 covers outdoor temporary structures, and ANSI E1.50 covers the support of LED and video walls, including wind.

A new rigger's part is to know the trigger points for this site, to know who is monitoring the weather, and to follow the call to stop or lower without argument when it comes.

De-rig

A de-rig is a rigging call in reverse, with every step of care that implies, and it is often done tired, late and in a hurry to get the trucks loaded. ICOPER says de-rigging follows the same structure as rigging.

Re-establish the load hazard zone first. Remove secondary suspensions and the notice at the controller before any hoist moves. Check that the path down is clear and that the load can be lowered safely. Lower in controlled moves with spotters, as for the lift, and guide the load as it comes in to land, onto dollies or the floor, never onto hands or feet.

Then detach, and inspect as things come apart: a sling that was fine at load-in may have been damaged during the show. Tag faulty equipment on the spot and keep it separate. Up riggers bring down every piece of hardware, and the ground riggers count it back against the list for each point.

Leave the floor as the venue expects: chalk and tape removed, rope bags and hardware packed, and nothing left in the steel.

Inspection records, tagging out, and the report

A rig is only as safe as the equipment that went into it, and equipment stays safe through a record of inspections and a system for taking faulty equipment out of use.

Every item gets a pre-use check by the person using it. Periodically — at least annually for truss under ANSI E1.2, and at intervals set by the relevant standard and the manufacturer for hoists and hardware — a qualified person inspects it thoroughly and records the result. Actsafe and Ontario's guidelines both expect a signed inspection and maintenance log.

When something fails a check, it is tagged out: a clear tag on the item itself saying it is out of service, what is wrong, and who found it, and the item is physically separated from good equipment. A faulty sling put back in the bin with a note on the truck is a faulty sling that will be used again.

And after the show, the post-production report records incidents, near misses and damaged equipment. ICOPER also recommends gap training: when a report shows that the crew did not know something they needed, somebody makes sure they learn it before the next rig.

Calls and signals

Common calls and crane hand signals. The crew agrees the ones in use at the briefing.

The hierarchy of control, in order

• Eliminate the hazard.
• Substitute something less hazardous.
• Isolate people from it, or engineer it out.
• Administrative controls — procedures, training, signs.
• Personal protective equipment, last.

The knots to know

• Bowline — a fixed loop that does not slip and unties easily.
• Clove hitch — grips a bar quickly; back it up with half hitches.
• Figure of eight — a stopper, or on a bight a secure loop.
• Sheet bend — joins two ropes, including different thicknesses.
• Round turn and two half hitches — ties off to a bar under load.

On the job

Load-in on a corporate stage. You are running cable and the lighting crew are hanging fixtures on a truss that is still at head height, ready to be flown.

You notice a safety bond on one fixture has been looped around the hook clamp rather than through the truss. It looks tidy. It is also useless: if the clamp lets go, the safety goes with it.

What you do is say so — to the lighting tech who fitted it, or to whoever is running the floor, straight away, in plain words: "that safety's round the clamp, not the truss." You do not refit it yourself unless that is your job and you have been shown how. You do not wait until the truss is at twelve metres, when fixing it becomes a lift, a delay and an argument.

Nobody will mind. The tech will say thanks, or will say they meant to come back to it, and it will take twenty seconds. That is the whole event — and it is the entire reason this book exists.

How to do it

1. Mark and announce the load hazard zone, and clear it of everyone not needed.
2. Confirm every connection has been checked by the person responsible, and every capacity matches the plan.
3. Walk the flight path and position spotters where they can see what the operator cannot.
4. Bump every hoist to confirm the right hoist moves the right way, and take up slack evenly.
5. Float the load a few centimetres clear of the floor, stop, and check every connection, chain and bag.
6. Raise in controlled moves, stopping to correct level as needed, with spotters watching.
7. Stop short of trim, then trim each hoist to the plot's height and check the load share.
8. Fit secondary suspensions as planned, put the notice at the controller, and only then release the zone.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer before checking. These are awareness questions: none of them asks you to calculate anything. The arithmetic has its own chapter, and its own practice.

Working at Height

Rigging happens at height, and falls from height are among the most serious injuries in the entertainment industry. Every rigging code in this book gives working at height its own rules, and IGVW's entry-level rigging qualification spends as much time on personal protective equipment as on statics.

This chapter covers how riggers get up, how they are protected from falling, and what happens if they do fall. It is not a substitute for hands-on fall protection training: nobody wears a harness on a rig who has not been trained and fitted by a competent person.

Getting up there

There are several ways to reach the work, and each has its own training, rules and limits.

Mobile elevating work platforms — scissor lifts and boom lifts — carry people and tools in a guarded basket. They need a trained operator, a floor that can carry them, and a clear path. In many places a harness attached to the anchor inside a boom lift's basket is required, and in some a scissor lift is used without one because its guardrails prevent the fall. Know the rule for the machine and the site.

Ladders are for short, light work. The ladder is on a firm, level base, set at the correct angle — about one out for every four up — secured or footed, and used with three points of contact. Nobody carries heavy hardware up a ladder in their hands.

Mobile scaffold towers have guardrails and platforms, locked wheels, and outriggers where the height requires them, and they are built to the manufacturer's instructions by trained people.

Catwalks, grids and fly galleries are part of the venue and have their own access rules and edge protection.

Rope access and climbing structure are specialist methods with their own qualifications. Some arena riggers climb and move on the steel using fall arrest throughout; that is learned under supervision on the job, not from a book.

Fall protection, in order of preference

ANSI ES1.18 sets out the order in which falls are dealt with: elimination, then prevention, then fall restraint, with fall arrest being the least preferable. It is the hierarchy of control applied to height.

Eliminate the need to work at height. Assemble truss, hardware and top rigging on the floor; lower a truss to work on it rather than sending someone to it.

Prevent the fall with collective protection: guardrails, platforms, catwalks with edge protection, scissor lifts with their rails. These protect everyone and need nobody to clip in.

Restrain the person so they cannot reach the edge: a harness and a lanyard short enough, and anchored so, that the edge is out of reach. A restrained person cannot fall.

Arrest the fall: a harness, a connecting system and an anchor that stop a person who has fallen. Fall arrest works, and it also means a fall has happened, a force has gone through a body, and someone may now be hanging and need rescue. That is why it is last.

The fall arrest system — harness, connector, anchor

A personal fall arrest system has three parts, and each has to be right.

The harness is a full-body harness, fitted to the wearer. Its fall arrest attachment point, usually on the back between the shoulders or on the chest, is the only point used for fall arrest; other rings are for positioning.

The connector joins the harness to the anchor. A lanyard with an energy absorber is a strap or rope that tears open a folded section during a fall to reduce the force on the body. A self-retracting lifeline pays out and retracts like a seatbelt and locks quickly when a fall begins, so the person falls a much shorter distance. A work positioning lanyard holds a person in place so they can use both hands, and is not a fall arrest device on its own. Many riggers use twin lanyards so they can move past an obstruction while always attached — 100 per cent tie-off.

The anchor is what the whole system hangs from, and it must be rated for fall arrest, not just strong-looking. Anchor strength is specified by the regulations and the equipment manufacturers; in the United States a commonly quoted figure is 5,000 lb, about 22 kN, per person. ICOPER requires fall arrest anchors to be identified separately from production rigging points, because a rigging point already carrying a load is not a fall arrest anchor.

Anchor above the attachment point wherever possible. An anchor at foot level lets a person fall twice the length of the lanyard before it even begins to stop them.

Clearance and fall factor

Fall arrest takes distance. A person who falls on a lanyard drops the length of the lanyard, then keeps falling while the energy absorber tears open, the harness stretches and the body settles into it. If the ground, a truss or a seating rake is closer than that, they hit it before the system stops them.

The total distance needed below the anchor — the clearance — is the lanyard length, plus the energy absorber's deployment, plus harness stretch, plus the distance from the harness attachment to the person's feet, plus a safety margin. For a common energy-absorbing lanyard, that easily adds up to more than five metres. A lanyard used near the floor, or above a truss a few metres down, may therefore protect nobody. A self-retracting lifeline, which locks quickly, needs much less clearance, which is why it is often the right choice at lower heights.

Fall factor describes how severe a fall will be: the distance fallen divided by the length of the lanyard. Anchored above the harness and falling with a slack-free lanyard, the factor is close to zero. Anchored level with the harness it is 1. Anchored at the feet it is 2, the worst case the equipment is designed for, with the largest force on the body. The higher the anchor, the lower the fall factor, the shorter the fall and the smaller the force.

Helmets, gloves and the rest of the PPE

A rigger's PPE protects them and the people below.

Helmets come in two kinds, and the difference matters. An industrial safety helmet, like those made to EN 397, protects the head from objects falling from above and often has no chin strap or one that releases easily. A climbing-style helmet, like those made to EN 12492, has a secure chin strap so it stays on in a fall. On the floor under work at height, the industrial helmet does its job; at height, where the rigger might fall, the helmet has to stay on. Many rigging helmets are made to meet the needs of both.

Gloves protect hands from wire rope, chain and hot surfaces, and need to be thin enough to handle hardware. Safety boots protect feet from dropped loads and give a firm grip on steel and ladders. High-visibility clothing is required on some sites, particularly around vehicles and machinery.

And the rigger's own equipment is tethered at height, as the dropped-objects section described.

Checking your PPE

Fall protection equipment is inspected by its user before every use, and periodically by a competent person with the result recorded.

Before use, check the harness webbing along its whole length for cuts, fraying, burns, chemical damage, hardening and faded or discoloured sections; check all the stitching, especially at load-bearing points; check buckles and adjusters for damage and that they lock properly; and check that the labels are present and readable. Check lanyards and energy absorbers the same way, and check that the energy absorber's cover is intact — many have an indicator showing whether they have already been deployed. Check that connectors' gates open, close and lock fully. Check a self-retracting lifeline pays out and retracts smoothly and locks when jerked.

Anything that has arrested a fall is out of service, whatever it looks like, exactly as for rigging hardware.

Store PPE clean, dry, away from sunlight, heat and chemicals, and never in a rigging bin where a shackle can cut it.

Suspension trauma, and why nobody works at height alone

A person who has fallen and is hanging in a harness is not safe. Hanging still and upright, with the leg straps pressing on the thighs and the legs not moving, blood pools in the legs and does not return to the heart properly. The person can become faint and lose consciousness, sometimes within minutes, and it can become life-threatening. This is suspension trauma, also called harness hang syndrome or orthostatic shock.

That is why every plan for work at height includes a rescue plan, why ANSI ES1.18 says rigging work at height must not be performed alone, and why ICOPER expects rescue capability on site whenever anyone is working at height. Rescue has to happen quickly, and it has to be planned before anyone climbs, not worked out after someone falls.

A person left hanging should keep their legs moving, and use foot loops or relief straps if their harness has them, to stand in and take pressure off the leg straps. Once rescued, they are treated according to current first-aid guidance and medically assessed, even if they feel fine.

Performing a rescue is a specialist skill taught on rescue courses. What every rigger needs to know is that the risk exists, what the rescue plan for this site is, and who is trained to carry it out.

Fall protection terms

The words on a fall protection plan and a PPE label.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer before checking.

Rigging Awareness & The Path Forward

Understanding rigging and how to become qualified.

Rigging understood

Pulling it together, rigging fundamentals is understanding AV rigging — the safe suspension of overhead gear: loads and forces, points and structure, hardware, the careful process, and above all the safety-critical nature and the absolute requirement for qualification. This awareness is valuable for anyone in AV (understanding rigging, respecting its seriousness, and working safely around it), even if you never rig. But it is awareness only — rigging itself requires qualified, certified training. Rigging understood is grasping the safety-critical discipline of overhead rigging and the qualification it demands. Rigging is serious, skilled, qualified work.

This understanding helps everyone in AV (knowing what rigging is, why it's serious, and to leave it to qualified riggers and work safely around it) and is the conceptual foundation for those who want to pursue rigging as a career (through proper training). Understanding rigging fundamentals — and that real rigging requires qualification — is important AV awareness. Rigging is a safety-critical, qualified discipline to understand and respect.

The path to becoming a rigger

For those who want to become riggers, the path is clear: get proper, accredited rigging training and certification (such as ETCP — Entertainment Technician Certification Program — rigging certification), learn hands-on under qualified, experienced riggers, build real experience and qualification, and always work within your training and the regulations. Rigging is a skilled, qualified career (riggers are essential and valued in live events), but one that demands proper training and certification — there are no shortcuts on safety. Becoming a rigger requires accredited training, certification, and qualified experience.

This book's role is awareness and foundation; the path to actually rigging runs through accredited certification and qualified, hands-on training. The book Advanced Rigging builds further awareness, but real rigging skill comes from proper training. Respect rigging's seriousness, get qualified if you want to do it, and always work safely. Rigging is a rewarding career for the properly trained and certified. Get trained, get certified, work safely. (This book is awareness/preparation only — it does not qualify you to rig.)

Practical sign-off

This book builds rigging AWARENESS only. The learner understands what rigging is, why it's safety-critical, and that real rigging requires accredited training and qualification. It does NOT qualify anyone to rig — that requires certified training (e.g., ETCP) and qualified supervision.

• Explained what rigging is and why it is safety-critical
• Understood loads, points, hardware, and the process at an awareness level
• Understood that real rigging requires qualified, certified riggers
• Knows the path to becoming a rigger is accredited training and certification

Certification routes, country by country

There is no single worldwide rigging qualification, but every major market has a recognised route, 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 work experience, and the exam is 150 questions in three hours, covering planning and engineering, installation, and materials and equipment. It is widely required by venues, unions and employers, and its published content outline is a good map of what a professional rigger is expected to know.

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

In Germany, the IGVW's SQQ2 qualification has three levels. Level 1 is entry: a rigger who works only under instruction and supervision, with around sixty-six hours of syllabus covering law, statics, equipment and PPE. Levels 2 and 3 add planning, supervising, rescue and leading the rigging trade.

In Australia, rigging is a licensed high-risk work class at basic, intermediate and advanced levels, and the live production training package adds an arena rigging unit, CUASTA414, whose prerequisites include the intermediate licence and working safely at heights.

Canadian provinces each set their own rules, and elsewhere local regulations apply. Whatever the route, it runs the same way: learn the fundamentals, work under qualified riggers, build documented experience, and be assessed.

What to do next

A fundamentals book gives you the words, the numbers and the reasons. The skill is in the hands, and it is learned on real rigs.

Get the training your market recognises for work at height and for the access equipment you will use; many riggers start there, because it opens the door to being useful on a call. Look for rigging courses that include hands-on work with hardware, hoists and truss. Ask to join rigging calls as a ground rigger or truss hand under a head rigger who is willing to teach, and keep a record of every call: the venue, the rig, the hoists, what you did and who supervised you, because every certification route asks for documented experience.

Read the standards and codes that apply where you work — ICOPER and ANSI ES1.18 are free to download and readable in an afternoon. Keep your own PPE, and learn to inspect it properly.

And keep asking why. The best riggers are the ones who still check the arithmetic, still look at the steel, and still say "stop" when something is wrong, years after anyone would think less of them for not doing it.

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