Summit Steel Among the Champions

This year’s event was held in two giant marquees pitched at KICC’s headquarters in Waterden Road, Hackney. The bigger of the two marquees measured a staggering 105m wide by 40m deep while the other measured 85m by 20m. The conference was attended by approximately 120,000 people during its eight-day run. The main stage was positioned along one long wall of the large marquee. Summit Steel provided hanging points for the lighting in the form of trusses to the front and side of the stage, while the main PA system was flown using two of Summit’s versatile SmarTmasts, the self climbing tower developed by Summit director Jon Bray. The prize-winning SmarTmast has an exceptionally small footprint, keeping audience blind spots to a minimum. The lighting presented problems of its own. The building’s portal frames every five metres gave Summit a further challenge. "Each one can only carry 200kg so a lot of care was needed to ensure that we spread the loading over as many frames as possible," said Bray. To ensure good sound, Summit rigged a second delay PA system in the smaller marquee. "Because of the structure’s shape, essentially a long thin rectangle, it was very difficult to throw sound from a single system. We rigged a delay PA truss running the full 80 metre length of the second marquee," said Bray.