ABTT ISG Gold Members Steeldeck – Risk Assessment for Platform Decks
10 November 2025
The Risk Assessment (RA) came into being as a response to several Theatre Consultants specifying platform decks to be limited to a lift of 25kg per person lift in their project specifications. Following conversations with various crewing company’s it seemed that there was not a useful and realistic RA in existence.
This 25kg limit is based on the Health and Safety Executives (HSE) general recommendations for manual handling, but if you look deeper into HSE website you will find two very useful tools the Manual-handling Assessment Charts (the MAC tool) and the Risk Assessment Pushing and Pulling loads (the RAPP tool), these tools are much more realistic in terms of lifting limits. Search the HSE website for ‘MAC Tool’ and ‘RAPP Tool’.
They both take a wider view, looking not only at weight, but also how it is lifted, the object being lifted, and local environment, it is a very useful tool and can be used not just for Steeldeck but for many other activities including scene changes.
The MAC tool assesses two people lifting a 70kg Steeldeck as a high-level risk (3rd of 4 levels) on which it imposes some restrictions, none of which in an Entertainment and Event Industry context are onerous, it does NOT prohibit it.
Brod Mason Project Manager for Steeldeck and member of the ABTT Safety Committee worked on creating this Risk Assessment. You can access the Risk Assessment here: