A Powered Rigging Standard For Review And A New Project

The draft standard, BSR E1.6-1, Entertainment Technology--Powered Winch Hoist Systems, is available for public review from now through December 25, 2006. BSR E1.6-1 deals with powered winch systems that do not use serially manufactured electric chain hoists, and is intended to establish requirements for the design, manufacture, inspection, and maintenance of powered winch hoist systems for lifting and suspending loads in theatres and other places of public assembly. The public review materials are available here on the ESTA website.

The BSR E1.6-1 project is part of a larger E1.6 project to draft standards for powered rigging systems in theatrical venues. The project was announced to the American National Standards Institute and to the general public in late 1997, and originally was conceived as one document. However, after several public reviews of a unified BSR E1.6 draft document, it became clear that the large topic of powered rigging systems would be better handled by dividing the project into smaller documents. BSR E1.6-1 covers powered systems that use winches that are not serially-manufactured chain hoists, while BSR E1.6-2 covers powered systems that use serially manufactured chain hoists. BSR E1.6-2 was most recently made available to the public for comment in a review that ended May 22.

At its meeting on October 18, the Rigging Working Group voted to start a third part of this project: BSR E1.6-3, Safe Use of Serial Manufactured Electric Chain Hoists in the Entertainment Industry. The scope of the project is, as the name suggests, the operation and safe use of electric link chain hoists having capacity of two tons or less and used in the entertainment industry. This standard is not intended to cover the design and maintenance of the hoists, since that would be covered by E1.6-2.

Anyone interested in working on the BSR E1.6-3 project is invited to become involved, either by joining the Rigging Working Group or by commenting on the draft document when it is available for public review. Membership in the working group is open to all who are affected by the work of the group. There is no fee, and membership in ESTA or any other organization is not a requirement, but voting members are required to attend meetings regularly and to vote on letter ballots. The Rigging Working Group is particularly interested in having people who would represent a dealer or rental company join as voting members. This would help maintain a balance of interests in the working group. Information about joining a working group is available here on the ESTA website.

For more information, please contact:

Karl G. Ruling
Technical Standards Manager
ESTA
875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 1005
New York, NY 10001
1-212-244-1505
Fax 1-212-244-1502
[email protected]