With access to the stadium at 5pm on the Saturday evening to start laying trackway, and soundchecks commencing at 8am, contractors were scheduled to work through the night. The stage drove onto site at 11pm and needed to be positioned and built by 3am. At the end of the event, the crews had just 12 hours before the pitch was in use again for football.
In charge of production for the event was project manager Andy Barr from London-based Pure Solutions. He explains the logistics of the day: "It was clear to me from the outset that, with only a 36 hour window at the venue, we were going to have to think creatively," he says. "We were also going to need a bunch of people who could both make things happen and fit with the nature of the event."
One major consideration was the fact that the stage was to be positioned on the pitch itself. "Dougie Robertson [groundsman at Upton Park] has an extremely pressurised job keeping the pitch up to scratch," continues Barr. "It's worth about £1 million and just 10 inches bellow the surface is a complex array of ventilation, drainage, heating and stabilisation systems. When I told him that we wanted to drive a 33 tonne artic onto the middle of it to load in the equipment, well let's just say that his face said it all."
Both SEGL and SRC have vast experience of positioning stages in tricky locations and, with the aid of the trackway laid across the pitch, were able to keep the precious turf intact.
(Jim Evans)
