Well, as you know from my posts, those guys were violating not only standard
safety usage, but also the rules that were in place to allow us the exemption. That was just plain stupid. As you say, they are lucky, very very lucky, the accident that
will happen, didn't happen that time.
For your transient student labor. Create your own "certification". For those who are majors, have a required
safety session at the start of each year that may last a couple of hours, independent of any show or rehearsal and which covers the basics of
safety in the shop and on various crews. When I was teaching at U Mass we did that each year and students spent an hour in the scene shop, the costume shop and on
stage. The
safety training did not go into great depth in any one area but covered the basics and those not attending were not allowed to audition or participate on crews until the session was made up. For those who are not majors, require a 20 minute sit-down
safety session for each crew they are on before the first
call to
cover the
safety issues of that particular crew. Keep a
current list of those who are "up to date" on their
safety sessions. Not only will it make your
stage safer, if anything does happen, you have a record of what was done to prevent it and a way to evaluate what could be done in the future to prevent a recurrence of the event. It can be done.
As for the height of the
foot pad, no judgment, no math needed. If the lift could move, that was the height, no more. 1/2" would have been a No-No, way too high. What that meant was with most lifts the pad was actually still touching the floor but not taking weight. In addition, if the figures showed a condition that was even close to being close to the brink, it would not have passed. Like a
design factor for rigging components, we made sure there was a very large margin for error before we presented our case to the
OSHA people.
Also the way you talk, I suspect that you are generally using the lift beyond the height at which the practice is proven safe. As you may recall our working height was only about 18-20 feet. IIRC the gentleman in California applying for the exemption is only working at about 24'. As I mentioned earlier, the force pyramid gets out of range very quickly as the height increases. BTW, If you are interested, contact me off list and I'll
send you the formulas and methodology used to determine the
safety of the procedure.
While I applaud your use of harness and
lanyard, just as a matter of information. While all
boom lifts require a harness and clip off,
OSHA does not require either when in a one man vertical lift or a
scissors lift. In both those cases the lift railing is deemed the "
safety" device. Some local jurisdictions may over ride that or require a "positioning device" which is not necessarily a harness but which prevents the worker from falling out of the lift should a slip occur or should the worker lose consciousness for any reason. Check your local jurisdiction for
current rules.
Hope this helps.