Short answer: there is no minimum height. Türkiye's Construction Work Health and Safety Regulation defines it in Annex 4 (A) as any work carried out where there is a difference in level and a fall could cause injury. No two metres, no three metres, no threshold at all. The technician lifting scenery at the edge of an 80 cm stage deck and the one hanging a fixture on a truss seven metres up sit under the same heading. The rules also set an order, and that order shapes the whole build: do the work on the ground if you can, use a platform with guardrails if you cannot, and treat a full body harness as the last resort rather than the first. What follows: who is allowed to drive a scissor lift, who may stand under a truss while it goes up, why a harness usually offers no protection in a ballroom with a six metre ceiling, and how often each piece of kit has to be inspected.
How high does working at height start?
The law describes a situation rather than a number, and the definition in Annex 4 (A) contains no threshold. So the useful question on site is not how many metres but what happens if someone falls. The Ministry of Labour and Social Security's 2025 guide on working at height in construction answers that with a free fall table: in the first 0.2 seconds a falling person has already travelled 20 cm, which means the fall is well underway before any reaction begins. After one second the distance is roughly 5 metres and the speed around 35 km/h. Someone toppling backwards off a stage deck has no reaction time left to use. The same guide adds a planning requirement that event crews tend to skip: the work has to be planned in advance, and falls from height have to appear in the emergency plan. This is not a job to improvise on build night.
Which rules actually apply to an event build?
Two regulations come up and their scopes differ. The Work Equipment Regulation states in its Article 2 that it covers every workplace falling under Law No. 6331 on Occupational Health and Safety. Any build using a scissor lift, a forklift, a chain hoist, scaffolding or slings is inside that scope, whether it happens in a ballroom, an exhibition hall or a field. The Construction Work Regulation, by contrast, ties itself to the list of construction activities in its Annex 1, and a typical stage build does not appear there. Even so, the definition of working at height, the order of protective measures and the technical requirements are set out in most detail in that regulation, and the ministry guide points to it as the most comprehensive source on the subject. Article 10 of Law No. 6331 then obliges the employer to carry out or commission a risk assessment, and fall risk during the build belongs in it. The numbers keep this concrete. In a 10 July 2025 assessment of SGK's 2024 statistics, the ministry reports 552 fatal accidents in the construction sector, 29.1 percent of all work-related deaths, and falls from height lead the 514 classified fatal cases with 215 of them.
Ground assembly first, guardrails second, harness last
The sequence is written down, not a matter of preference. Annex 4 (A) opens with it: assembly and similar work that does not have to happen at height should as far as possible be done on the ground first. In event terms that means building the truss at deck level, hanging the fixtures, speakers and cabling there, then lifting the whole system. The second step is collective protection: safety first comes from guardrails, fall prevention platforms, barriers, covers, working scaffolds, safety nets or air bags. Personal equipment sits third and only on condition that collective measures cannot remove the risk entirely, in which case suitable anchor points or lifelines are created and full body harness systems used. The Work Equipment Regulation repeats the same priority in its own words: collective protection takes precedence over personal protection. If you use guardrails, the dimensions are fixed too. Citing TS EN 13374, the ministry guide puts the top of the main rail at least one metre above the working surface, requires the rail to be continuous and caps any horizontal gap at 12 cm. Two more clauses get overlooked on event sites: work at height is carried out under the supervision and control of a competent person appointed by the employer, and workers must be informed and trained on the hazards and risks involved.
Who is allowed to drive a scissor lift?
Article 8 of the Work Equipment Regulation settles it in one line: work equipment carrying special risk may only be used by people assigned to use it. The same regulation defines an operator as a worker who is competent in using the equipment, and Article 11 requires the training to happen before the equipment is used, not after. Whoever happens to be free on the stage cannot simply get in the basket. The ministry guide's section on mobile elevating work platforms lists the points crews get wrong most often: operators must hold the necessary competence and be trained on the machine, on fall arrest equipment and on emergency procedures; the load capacity must be clearly displayed and known to the operator; an authorised person must confirm the machine is fit for use; platforms not designed for rough terrain must stay on firm, level ground; overhead power lines must be accounted for. Three points hit event work directly. Climbing on the guardrails to gain height is prohibited and both feet must stay on the platform floor, which is exactly what a crew does when the truss is just out of reach. Combustion engine machines must not be used indoors or where ventilation is poor, which is why a diesel scissor lift does not belong in a ballroom. And anyone in the basket clips into the anchor point designed by the manufacturer, not to the handrail.
Who may stand under a truss while it is lifted?
Nobody. Annex 2 of the Work Equipment Regulation puts it plainly: unless technically unavoidable, measures are taken so that no one is under a suspended load, and loads are not carried over unprotected work areas where people may be present. The same annex covers parked loads as well. A suspended load is not left unattended unless access to the danger zone is prevented or the load is secured safely in place. Leaving a truss at half height while the crew goes to eat breaks that clause. One more rule gets broken regularly on builds: equipment not manufactured for lifting people may be used to lift them only in exceptional or emergency circumstances, with the necessary precautions and under supervision. Riding up on forklift forks, hoisting someone on a chain motor or hanging onto a truss as it rises do not qualify. Rigging hardware has its own clause: lifting accessories are selected to suit the load, the pick points, the connecting components and the atmospheric conditions, taking the shape and construction of the sling into account. And if the operator cannot see the full path of the load, a trained and experienced person must be assigned to direct them.
Does a harness help in a room with a six metre ceiling?
Not unless you do the maths first. A personal fall arrest system does not prevent a fall, it stops one, and stopping one needs clear distance underneath. The ministry guide calls this the maximum fall distance and gives the formula: with a full body harness, a lanyard and an energy absorber, the distance required is twice the length of the lanyard plus 1.75 metres plus a one metre safety margin. With the two metre lanyard most commonly found on site, that comes to 6.75 metres, before you add harness stretch and any stretch in the lifeline. Clip that system to a truss in a ballroom with a six metre ceiling and it cannot stop the fall before the floor does. The kit is attached, the protection is not there. There are two ways out. A retractable type fall arrester brings the requirement down to two metres plus the one metre margin. Better still is a restraint system, where the line is kept short enough that the worker cannot reach the edge and the fall never starts. Two further rules from the guide: the system must include an energy absorber so the arrest force on the worker stays under 6 kN, and a harness that has arrested one fall cannot go back into service unless a competent person inspects it and signs a written report.
How often is each item inspected, and by whom?
The list was rewritten last year. Annex 3 of the Work Equipment Regulation was replaced in full on 23 December 2025, and Table 2 now sets these maximum intervals: mobile elevating work platforms, meaning scissor and boom lifts, one year where no standard says otherwise, with TS EN 280+A1 as the criterion; mobile access and working towers, the aluminium towers crews roll around a hall, one year under TS EN 1004-1; construction scaffolds six months; cranes and lifting tackle one year; industrial trucks including forklifts and pallet trucks one year; lifting accessories such as slings and clamps one year. Who may carry out the inspection is also specified. For lifting and conveying equipment other than scaffolds, the work falls to mechanical, mechatronics, metallurgical and materials or manufacturing engineers, technical teachers from machine or metal training programmes, and machine technicians; for scaffolds the authority passes to civil engineers and construction technicians. The inspector has to be registered in the ministry's EKİPNET system, and a report without their signature is invalid. An annual certificate on its own is not enough either. The same annex requires operators to check equipment before every start of work, looking for cracks, loose connections, deformation, wear and corrosion, testing the functions and recording the result. Equipment that fails an inspection cannot be used until the fault is fixed, and the employer has to mark it visibly.
What to ask for before build day
Four documents are worth requesting at quotation stage: the current inspection report for the elevating platform being used, the operator's training record, the inspection report for the lifting accessories, and the name of the competent person running the build. Add a work at height plan to the file. The ministry guide expects that plan to be prepared by a competent person, approved by a manager, kept available on site and reviewed regularly. The site decisions are short. The area under the truss is barriered off for the duration of the lift and nobody walks through it. No second crew works in that zone while people are overhead. Lighting for an overnight load-in is planned separately. Nobody climbs an access tower before the castors are locked. Tower and platform use stops when the wind picks up, and the regulation backs that last one: temporary work at height is carried out in suitable weather conditions, and suitability is judged first against the equipment's own manual and production standard. Tales Event is based in Istanbul and delivers sound, lighting, LED and stage production with one in-house team across Türkiye, for launches, dealer meetings, openings, themed gala nights and graduation ceremonies. Send us your room dimensions, ceiling height and the list of what needs flying, and we will set out the build method, the access equipment and the work at height plan alongside the quote.
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