Guardrail

A guard is the barrier along an open-sided walking surface. The building code sets two separate numbers that get conflated: a guard is required where the drop is more than thirty inches, and where one is required it is built at least forty-two inches high. People remember the forty-two and think it is the trigger.

Raised stage and platform areas carry an explicit exception, and so do elevated surfaces used for access to lighting and equipment. This is why compliant stages have open downstage edges and why a followspot platform is not fenced on all four sides.

The exception is narrower than it is usually taken to be. It removes the building code’s guard requirement on the performance surface. It does not remove an employer’s duty to protect crew working at height during load-in, it does not cover a press riser or a seating platform that is not a performance area, and it does not remove the authority of the local official who can require a guard anyway.

The practical reading for an event: open the edge a performer uses and guard everything else — the back of the stage, the sides where the drop is unlit, the camera platform, the choir tiers, and any run of deck people walk along in the dark. Where a guard would ruin a sightline, a low sightline rail is a product, but it is not a code-compliant guard and should not be described as one.

Staging and rigging — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• Stage deck The modular platform a stage is built from — four feet by eight in most of the country, with the height set by the legs rather than by the deck.
• Riser A small raised platform for a specific thing — a drum kit, a camera, a choir, a panel — and almost always the piece that gets left off the drawing.
• Stage stairs The steps up to a stage — where the trap is that a convenient riser height is also an illegal one.