Can anyone point me to some info I can use to educate our Campus Facilities department regarding the who/whats of rigging?
Background: We rent out our arena for large events. Occasionally, the renters want to contract in lighting/audio/video and rig them from the roof. Up until recently this would only be once every couple of years, but we now have a couple of annual recurring clients that want to do it. The last engineering survey of the building was done quite a while ago, and there have been numerous changes since then (re-roof the building, move the scoreboards, replaced lighting, etc.). From the facilities department's view, each of these individual changes have been relatively small, so nobody ever asked for an updated capacity spec. Taken as a whole however, I'm sure they have affected the load capacity.
I asked Facilities for an updated document I could pass along to the rigging companies. The engineering firm that the University has on contract won't send me an updated spec, even though they were the authors of the original one. They insist that we provide a list of equipment to be hung, and they'll sign off that it's safe. This means that generally the info has to travel AV Contractor > Client > Me > Facilities Dept. > Engineer, and back. At the last event the engineer showed up, and began questioning the safety of using standard steel stingers, gakflex, and shackles for attachment to the steel. He also demanded a full diagram of each individual point with each component labeled. We complied, but that's impractical to do in advance due to the day-of changing needs/gear in our industry.
It's clear to me that both Facilities and the Engineer are not familiar with the rigging process at all. They're hesitant to sign off that things are safely hung (understandably with their unfamiliarity), but in reality that's the rigging company's job. I'm looking to them for what limits we need to work within. They're trying to go above and beyond that, but in the process wandering beyond their specialty and the result is that it's gumming things up.
So I'm looking for general info that I could send them that would explain rigging in language they can understand.
Something that might cover standard rigging methods, and who's responsible for what. I've tried explaining it to them, but it's not making it across and I think an outside independent source would help.
Alternatively, does anyone else have any other recommendations on a different way to proceed?
Background: We rent out our arena for large events. Occasionally, the renters want to contract in lighting/audio/video and rig them from the roof. Up until recently this would only be once every couple of years, but we now have a couple of annual recurring clients that want to do it. The last engineering survey of the building was done quite a while ago, and there have been numerous changes since then (re-roof the building, move the scoreboards, replaced lighting, etc.). From the facilities department's view, each of these individual changes have been relatively small, so nobody ever asked for an updated capacity spec. Taken as a whole however, I'm sure they have affected the load capacity.
I asked Facilities for an updated document I could pass along to the rigging companies. The engineering firm that the University has on contract won't send me an updated spec, even though they were the authors of the original one. They insist that we provide a list of equipment to be hung, and they'll sign off that it's safe. This means that generally the info has to travel AV Contractor > Client > Me > Facilities Dept. > Engineer, and back. At the last event the engineer showed up, and began questioning the safety of using standard steel stingers, gakflex, and shackles for attachment to the steel. He also demanded a full diagram of each individual point with each component labeled. We complied, but that's impractical to do in advance due to the day-of changing needs/gear in our industry.
It's clear to me that both Facilities and the Engineer are not familiar with the rigging process at all. They're hesitant to sign off that things are safely hung (understandably with their unfamiliarity), but in reality that's the rigging company's job. I'm looking to them for what limits we need to work within. They're trying to go above and beyond that, but in the process wandering beyond their specialty and the result is that it's gumming things up.
So I'm looking for general info that I could send them that would explain rigging in language they can understand.
Something that might cover standard rigging methods, and who's responsible for what. I've tried explaining it to them, but it's not making it across and I think an outside independent source would help.
Alternatively, does anyone else have any other recommendations on a different way to proceed?
