U2 and Workers' Comp?

My wife and I had the opportunity last weekend, after a two year wait, to finally attend the rescheduled U2 concert at Invesco Field. The two year wait was necessitated by the band's lead singer, Bono, injuring his back mid-tour before playing in Denver. For those of you who were there you'd probably agree it was well worth the wait. My wife, who is even more of a fan than I, was doubly ecstatic because she got to meet Bono when the band got out of their vehicle to sign autographs and chat up the crowd by the south stadium entrance prior to the show.

We had arrived early and were in our seats well before the opening act, The Fray, was set to perform. I guess I've worked at Pinnacol too long, but as I sat there looking at the stadium and the amazing stage I started thinking about how much work it takes to put on an event like this. Not just the amount of physical and mental effort, but the number of skills (in insurance lingo: job classifications) as well.

From the folks you see at every similar event - ticket takers, food and beverage vendors, ushers, security - to more specialized jobs like stage setup, lighting, choreographers, and even guitar tuning, the work being done all involves some level of risk of injury on the job. I'm not sure if Pinnacol was covering any of the workers' comp aspects for this particular concert but day in and day out our underwriters have to assess such risk and that can be very challenging.  By the way, the coolest job I saw, short of actually being a member of the band, were the folks running the lighting that were hoisted by cables, just before the show started, way up into the four legs of the 'alien spacecraft' that the stage was supposed to represent. They also had the best seats in the house!

Just before U2 took the stage the scrolling screen, which was displaying all sorts of factoids, told the crowd that the height of the stage was 167' tall. I'm sure after the crowds had filtered out after a wonderful spring night in Denver, someone, or many someones, had to climb way up into the stage  to start taking it all down, in reverse of the way they had put it up. I wonder how our underwriters might assess the risks associated with that type of work, but given the breadth and variety of the types of work being done all over Colorado every day, I'm sure they'd take the challenge in stride!