Lighting: Liabilities and how to avoid the danger

Every business will have its own specific liabilities. As a business that deals with manual labor, my liabilities are rather straight forward. We are dealing with not only heavy equipment that is rigged high off of the ground, but also equipment that has enough electricity coursing through it to kill a full grown man if they are reckless and careless.

My major liability is the injury of my employees. If my employees are not safe and careful with their work they can and will get hurt. Leaving me with the requirement of workers compensation. However, it is possible for me to mitigate these dangers.

As an employer it becomes my responsibility to educate my employees on safe operation of the equipment and other safety protocols to protect themselves, the equipment and of course the public that will inevitably be exposed to the environment in which my equipment is being used. The first key to ensuring the safety of those under my employ is to educate them on proper power distribution. Understanding how much power each instrument requires will help prevent any electrical safety issues such as arcing current, and circuit overloading. When working under house power, overloading isn’t as dangerous to the employee, but if we are using a generator and the generator is overloaded it is liable to explode causing great injury or even death.

Also, it becomes my duty to ensure that the proper number of people are assigned to do the job. With heavy equipment it is imperative that more than one person be present for the lifting and rigging of lights. at the very least someone needs to be present to help stabilize ladders and other means of reaching the equipment often rigged more than 10 feet in the air. By properly educating my employees and ensuring there are enough people to safely handle and rig the equipment will undoubtedly help mitigate any issue pertaining to worker injury, but one can never be too careful. Inevitable things do happen.