Jump to content

tom w

Regular Members
  • Posts

    35
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Previous Fields

  • Member Status
    Working in the industry
  • Current Employment or place of study
    M.D. of Upstaging Ltd. We are a system staging company based in Nottingham. U.K.
  • Full Name
    Thomas Watson

Contact Methods

  • Website URL
    http://upstaging.co.uk

Profile Information

  • Location
    Nottinghamshire

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

tom w's Achievements

Part-timer

Part-timer (5/14)

  • Dedicated Rare
  • First Post
  • Collaborator
  • Conversation Starter
  • Week One Done

Recent Badges

  1. Several years ago a bunch of my crew stopped off at a shop on the way back from a gig in central -ish London. 2 minutes later they're surrounded by armed police. "Any concealed weapons?"... one of my guys said "I have a Gerber" He slowly lifted his coat to show the offending article on his belt. The whole armed squad laughed at this. "We are looking for weapons, not tools"
  2. It was a break in a roof, which could have been a pre existing fracture which hadn't been spotted (which is down to poor inspection procedure and possibly under-skilled staff) or as a result of an uneven lift...It's easier to run 4 motors in sync than the 4 hand winches that they used. The client dealt with the other supplier and any reporting which may or may not have taken place. I think it would have been outside of my remit to do what could be perceived as 'mud slinging'. My knowledge of the problem was not much more than "this one is broken, please help" The client had a large and efficient site crew who had already 'derigged and removed' the offending article by the time we arrived. Even simple rostra can be assembled wrong. Once you get onto outdoor staging then the capacity for error is much greater. As we're Layher based we use Layher for calcs. However one wrongly placed brace, ledger etc can have a great affect on the structure and render the calcs null and void. Our only recent dry hire was some Layher spigots to help a client out. We don't let others assemble what we provide. Although we have occasionally had crew provided, I much prefer to use my own teams. 50% of the 12 damaged beams that we have incurred in 11 years are down to 1 small dry hire in the early years :(
  3. I am aware of a few stage/roof failures which have never reached the press. A few years ago we were replaced by a client in favour of a cheaper stage and roof. We still had other structures etc on the site, and built the FOH 40m in front of the main stage - which was not even on site when we arrived. Sign offs done, site left, job done. I received a panic call the day before gates opened - the clients preferred suppliers' roof had failed. It was only at lx rig height, and only carrying truss, when some of the main chords broke. We managed to prep, deliver and build a stage and roof system by the next morning. This endeavour involved several drivers, 2 shifts of crew, couriers bringing spares from other event sites, and a whole lot of hard work. But we saved their event. Skip forward a few years, and the same client has made the same decision to go elsewhere. The cavalry will not be riding if anything untowards happens this time.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.