Repeated Cautions: necessary or redundant?

["Therese Harris" <tharris -at- metriguard -dot- com>]

I am the lone writer for an engineering firm that designs, builds, and sells
complex factory machinery (luckily for my sanity, we have a limited line of
highly-specialized equipment). As I rewrite one of the manuals, an engineer
has questioned whether we really need to include the cautionary part of
steps that are done over and over again. That is, when calibrating or
adjusting the machine, the operator must repeatedly raise and lower
pneumatically-driven parts. Each time the parts are lowered or raised, we
have a step that says:

"Lower the carriages by shouting ?Clear!? and pushing the button labeled
?Carriages: Down? on the control panel of the machine."
or
"Raise the carriages by shouting, ?Clear!? and pulling the button labeled
?Carriages: Up (Operate)? on the control panel of the machine."

In some tasks, these steps are repeated up to 6 or 8 times. His argument is
that since these steps are done so often in every task and procedure, the
repetition will make readers skip over the cautionary part, and it makes us
look silly too. And, he believes that factory workers get so much safety
training anyway, that we are beating a dead horse and losing credibility
because of it. However, the danger level of having body parts caught in the
machine ranges from minor to extreme personal injury, including loss of
fingers, etc. We do have a whole chapter devoted to safety that explains the
various dangers and how they are labeled on and in the machine (to satisfy
CE requirements), in addition to cautionary notes throughout the manual,
plus these cautionary phrases within procedural steps.

 So my questions are:
-Are we beating a (safe but) dead horse?
-Are we compromising safety if we merely say "Lower carriages by pushing the
button..."?
-Does that extend our liability?
-Can we omit the caution part each time if we put a general caution at the
beginning of each procedure?
-Does repetition necessarily put the reader to sleep?
-What other options might we have?

Thanks in advance for the opinions and fresh air!

Therese Harris
Technical Writer/Document Specialist
email to: tharris -at- metriguard -dot- com

Don't forget: National Split Pea Soup Week is always the second week in
November.


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