Life, death and dog poo
I know of 2 fatalities that have happened in the marquee industry and whilst I wouldn’t expect you to be in the same circumstances it does show that you should be careful.
I should point out that neither of these happened at our company, the closest we ever came was my old mate Dougie standing on a roof rack waving round 6m long metal beams in a thunderstorm in Regents Park. We were all laughing until lightening took down a tree 500 yards away and we nearly needed a change of underwear!
Incident no. 1
This was very similar to Dougie’s metal beam waving but replace thunderstorm with overhead high voltage power cables. Not good. Now if you’re using our standard marquees the longest pole is 2m so this shouldn’t be an issue but personally I still wouldn’t put a marquee up underneath power cables. It may seem like common sense but remember to look for this when inspecting any site.
Incident no.2
Sometimes you need more power than standard extension leads will give you. At this point you should either hire a generator in or get an electrician to connect a large mains supply across to the marquee. What you shouldn’t do is try to connect an electrical supply yourself if you’re not qualified – that’s what this guy did with fatal consequences.
Any industry will have it’s nightmare stories and marquee hire certainly isn’t high risk but use some common sense.
My last point is something I remembered the other day, and that was the number of times we used to turn up to a garden and the customer hadn’t cleaned up all the dog mess in the garden. It’s genuinely unpleasant and technically from a health & safety point of view is probably a health hazard. Yes you can borrow a shovel but the best thing is to politely mention to any dog owning customer to please ensure their garden is clear before you arrive.
Thanks for reading
Spencer
