Hard hats - What does the colour signify?

[Ted]

In Angola, the government quite rightly wants to encourage health and safety in the workplace.

As a result, I have to provide my boys with hard hats, safety boots, goggles and ear plugs if they work with power tools, gloves, high-vis waistcoats etc etc.

In Angola, a white hard hat is normaly reserved for a chief engineer or for senior management. I have never been sure what is supposed to happen below that level but when we start a job we normally buy hard hats in a few different colours so a manager can spot a labourer from a tradesman from a distance and also because the tradesmen appreciate being differentiated.

However, Angola being Angola, we have never set a standard before such as yellow hat means senior labourer and blue hat means junior labourer as it is more a question of what colours the shop has in (buying materials in Angola is a nightmare and not comparable to the UK)!

But is there a recognised hierarchy in the UK?

Is the white hat for the boss, a certain colour for an engineer, another for a tradesman and one more for a labourer or does it vary from firm to firm?

[seanandruby]

our firm is white hat for everybody on site ....engineers, chippies, steelfixers, drainlayers etc. Supervisors all wear a black hat, although that does'nt mean they know what they are on aboUt.

[London Stone Paving]

I did a couple of years working in Sydney on the tunnel from Darling harbour to Kings cross. (Thats a story in itself, some of the machinery down there was mindblowing). There was a hierachy of hat colours down there.

The foreman always wore white hats and the minions would wear yellow hats. If you saw somebody wearing a blue hat or red hat then it usually signified that they were above the level of foreman.

[lutonlagerlout]

i remember lads collecting them years ago ,trying to get a set
AFAIK no hierarchy in the uk,but realistically you want a hat you can be seen in, so yellow is the one
LLL

[Mikey_C]

Does wearing it back to front confirm, that regardless of colour, you are indeed a T1T, or is that just my imagination!!

[haggistini]

white is more vizable like bike helmets but only coppers and wannbe coppers on old police bikes with the reflective stripes wear them knobs! i perfer white and a few stickers or famous signitures i once had "rock out with your c**k out" signed by pancho off of dirty sanchez....