"As with all things, the key to success lies in good forward planning and design. The rigging design involved a great deal of CAD drawing," said Summit Steel’s Chris Walker. "Having been awarded the contract on 1 November, by the time the tour went into rehearsal on Jan 10, we were already working with draft 8 of the rigging plot. Our extensive touring experience allowed us to co-ordinate all the rigging information from the tour’s various designers and suppliers," continued Walker. "We then liaised extensively with all the venues and their house rigging contractors to ensure that load-ins would run smoothly."
To rig the show, Summit used 220m of James Thomas trussing, along with 55 CM Lodestar hoists. These were used to provide backdrop, side screen, tracking screen and catwalk support trussing, as well as cable bridges and hoists used during daily fit-up for the scenic elements.
Total Fabrications Ltd were called in to manufacture the catwalk deck and handrail to fit the truss structure supplied by Summit Steel. "From an early stage, Total Fabrications and Summit worked closely together to produce an excellent result that is safe, looks great and is easy to tour and rig," commented Charlie Kail, the set construction co-ordinator.
"The catwalk is suspended using 26 Summit hoists fitted with position encoders and our remote load monitoring system," added Jon Bray. "By using QMotion’s K10s computer hoist command system we are able to ensure safe, accurate and repeatable positioning of the catwalk." Tracking of the LED screen is also controlled by QMotion, again supplied through Summit. This system, designed and built by QMotion to Chris Walker’s specifications, is driven by a QMotion custom tailored ‘SC7’ winch - a truss mountable winch originally built to Summit’s specifications for last year’s S Club 7 tour, but proving so successful that QMotion now hold a stock of 10 which have been used extensively by Summit at a variety of events.
Designed by Hattie Spice with lighting by Pete Barnes, the tour started at ‘The Point’ in Dublin on 27 January, and tours 11 venues around the UK and Ireland from London to Glasgow with a total of 23 performances, finishing at the NEC Arena in Birmingham on 28 February.
(Ruth Rossington)
