Desert Tent

[Thumperq]

Hello All,

 

Im currently working on a large festival project in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and the company is building a 1000 seat auditorium with a large stage and backstage facilities for about 100 people. The footprint of the tent that they are building is 45mx40m. Fire exits are not a problem as the structure is modular and can put in as many as is required. The seating block will be in a horseshoe shape and in the design plans all fits nicely. My question is based on the size of the tent, seating and backstage numbers what is the maximum operating capacity. Is there a calculation for people over space?

 

Any help from you clever clever people would be gratefully received.

[kerry davies]

This is one of those; "If you have to ask..." queries. If the tent builders cannot answer the questions, should they be building tents?

 

That may be harsh but should you ask ImagineerTom to hire a tent he would start by asking; for how many, what style and type of seating, how many aisles, what travel distances, what flooring, what demographic, stewarding levels, stage and backstage and performance areas and much else before telling you what sized tent is required. It isn't just a straightforward "bodies per square metre" answer though the basic one body per square metre does enter into it.

 

N.B.: Do not forget the pitch of the roof and wall height when designing any on-stage trussing. That one catches out more PM's than anything else in tents, as it goes up it goes forward eating into audience capacity.

[Jivemaster]

Hopefully the planners have designed this into the job, is it your job to check? Does Saudi Arabia have it's own codes or do they work to another set of norms.

[ImagineerTom]

Here's how SA (and indeed most of that region works) - event organisers / managers contact companies in other countries and ask us to design & spec equipment based on their needs; they ask for complete pitches and ask hundreds of questions as we go through the "tender process".... then suddenly they stop asking and give the job to a local company who do it for a fraction of the price but using the template/plans that the non-local companies have generated. Because of this those of us that get asked to tender for these sorts of jobs a lot make a habit of witholding key information and deliberately building minor errors in to the plans/process's/specs we submit precisely so that we don't end up being used to (effectively) write their business plan for free. It could be a coincidence but the limited information provided here (and the date) sound just like an event we spent a couple of weeks being hassled to "tender" for earlier in the year.

 

Of course when local, cheep companies who don't really know what they're doing take our specs/plans and try to build from them they don't spot the (very basic) errors and are unable to provide all the other information people need like what the venue capacities are and surprisingly often try to contact us for help or post the question on public forums like this.

 

The lesson is - you get EXACTLY what you pay for and if you want a professional turnkey service with all the support and information you need to actually deliver an event you need to employ a proper company or at the very least a proper experienced production manager.

 

//gets off soapbox//

[cfmonk]

+1 Tom, +1

[Roderick]

Sorry Sacha, I was going to respond with a basic formula that covers those calculations but after reading Tom's post I will not.

The practices outlined are still too common in a part of the world where money shouldn't be that important.

My advice would be to go to the company who build the structure and ask them to show their calculations and engineering to determine the occupancy capacity of the structure.

If they can't answer that question, tell them to go, cap in hand, to someone like Tom and ask provide the answers - at cost.

 

In the same way that we need to stamp out counterfeit equipment, we also need to stamp out theft of IP at this level.

[Thumperq]

Hello All,

 

Thank you for all the PM's with useful information and guidance. I very much appreciate you taking the time to answer my question.

 

Thanks.

[cfmonk]

As the three members of TBR who are most qualified to help (and myself in my own little way) have comment on here that they WON'T help, I would be curious as to the origin of said PMs...

 

C

[Just Some Bloke]

As the original poster seems happy now, the moderators are minded to close the thread at this point.