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George Michael - Video Tech Truss

It’s not often a vendor gets to supply totally new elements of technology to a tour having already secured an award for Innovation, in fact its possibly unique; so for Total Fabrications Limited (TFL) servicing the needs of the latest George Michael tour with Video Tech Truss has been doubly fulfilling.

Video Tech Truss, winner of the PLASA ‘Innovation’ Award for 2011, is an entirely new product designed and realised in cooperation with Chaos Visual Productions, the live event video specialist who first conceived of the idea. As the name suggests it is a product aimed squarely at the requirements of flown video walls; but we will let the George Michael video crew explain.

“The weight saving from not having a structural support frame integral to the LED modules allows us to hang a very large screen in places that wouldn’t normally have the load capacity,” said Dean Ruffy from the Chaos technical crew. The simple fact is the Video Tech Truss allows LED modules to be suspended directly; thus  the need for a large integrated structural support framework to enable crew to climb and service modules in situ is completely removed; hence the weight saving. Yet in doing so the Video Tech Truss addresses many other significant issues, as Head Rigger for the tour Steve Walsh explained.

 “First out it stacks, the whole Video Tech Truss for this tour is just two dollies – and the screen is 22 metres wide. It’s also fast to put together. From a health & safety point of view the ‘I’ beam trolley across the rear chord addresses the issue of access for repair head on.”   

The truss is an inverted triangle, the ‘I’ beam facilitates the use of beam trolleys with small personnel sized hoists attached which the crew use to scale the rear face of LED and perform service operations easily and with full safety and fall-arrest equipment in place. “This way is safer and we’re not flying all that additional weight of a sub-structure to support the LED panels,” added Walsh. “For me, as a custom truss designed for dedicated purpose its fantastic and ticks all the boxes.”

Gary White, Managing Director of Chaos Visual in the UK added his own endorsement, “we wouldn’t have gone anywhere else to have this built, Total Fabrications is the only place where you can find the mix of expertise, engineering, rigging and manufacturing, all in one place. Plus they have the reputation: To be developing something as function critical as this is too complex without the kind of cooperative approach for which TFL is famous.”

Total Fabrications fashions a special stage for the George Michael ‘Symphonica’ Tour

Total Fabrications Ltd (TFL) recently launched an award winning product on the current George Michael ‘Symphonica’ tour; their new Video Tech Truss. But TFL’s involvement in the tour was more embracing, for down below the video wall the complete stage-set was manufactured by TFL, and once again TFL was able to introduce innovations to the production.

The stage had to provide a secure platform for a thirty-five piece orchestra, ten band, four backing vocalists and George Michael, and it needed to do so in the most understated fashion. Set-designer and Tour Director Ken Watts wanted it to look as minimalist and stylish as possible. “George was very clear about how he wanted the show to look, clean and neat,” said Watts. “Determining the stage set was a proportionate response; how much space do the musicians need? Once I got the placement arranged it was just a matter of sitting down with Chris Cronin at TFL and letting him engineer the details that make it work.”

Stage Manager Rik Benbow and his team of carpenters deal with the set on a daily basis, “Built from TFL’s Arena Deck modular staging system, the design is in layers; a curved horseshoe shaped top section with integral linear LED strips routed into the deck sections defines the back and sides, and gives George a platform above the band and orchestra. Then the decking steps down in terraces with a staircase down the centre, the band and orchestra spread to each side. The big thing is there’s a sub-stage, these different pieces sit on top. That means when we switch from large arenas to one of the smaller opera houses or concert halls we’re also playing, we can effectively pick and mix the elements of the stage set that fit and suit the venue.”

The rolling sub-stage is home to a fully plumbed dressing room, as well as dedicated work spaces for backline crew; a secondary TFL rolling platform for the two monitor mixing set-ups sits directly behind. Jem Matthews is part of the carpenter team summed it up, “there are three of us carpenters and two trucks full of staging; eighteen set carts; 182 decks. It is fast, easy to build, and a good solid system.”

Quick Lock Status, no ordinary case

“We started this year at the beginning of April, since then I think I’ve been home maybe five consecutive days.” Pat Marks, designer in residence for Status Quo, arguably Britain’s hardest working band. “That’s a hundred and twenty-five shows on three continents. But for the last four or five years I’ve been living with a problem that compromises my show in a really irritating way; then last week at the LG Arena in Birmingham Chris Cronin from Total Fabrications Ltd (TFL) turned up and said, “you need one of these.”

The product was the RSC Lightlock, commercially available through TFL for eighteen months now, the fact that Marks had never seen one before validates just how busy the touring life of Quo is these days. The fact that it solved Marks dilemma is however another aspect altogether, for this wasn’t just the case of stabilising a single moving head, as Marks explained.

“I’ve had a design template we’ve been using for the last four or five years on and off. We have five frames hanging vertically across the back of stage, each one with four moving lights in it. The frames hang from a horizontal eight foot truss section on chains at various drops between five and eight feet. The look is good and the versatility of the hanging system works well as we shift from touring Europe to the Far East, Australia and South America, where the venues types vary immensely. The only problem is torque; make some extreme Pans with the lamps – I generally like to use Clay Paky Alpha Beams or Robe Robins – and the frames begin to oscillate. It’s an effect than can take some time to return to equilibrium.”

Despite Cronin’s confidence, Marks was not unnaturally sceptical, “I hadn’t just been looking at this for five years pulling my hair out, we had tried all sorts of ways to dampen the effect, varying cues, moving lamps in opposition, nothing worked; so when Chris said ‘just bolt one of these to the top of the eight foot truss’ I didn’t get too excited. However the effect was immediate, a few trial light cues and the frames were stopped dead, absolutely stock still. The guys on my crew from Amber Lighting in Glasgow were as incredulous as me, we wanted to open up the box and peek inside.”

Cronin dissuaded them, “it’s a mass of springs and fly-wheel in there,” he said. As an alternative Marks decided to test the device to extremes. “We took two adjacent frames, one with Lightlock, one without, and turned both through 360°, like we all used to do with playground swings when we were kids. Then we let them go. They both began to unwind quite violently, as you’d expect, but the one with the Lightlock stabilised after just 25 seconds, the other was still oscillating five minutes later. Nobody is ever going to subject the device to such forces for a show, but the fact it could affect such a large mass so quickly was really impressive.”

Marks has already been in touch with Amber Lights and requested they purchase a set for his next tour with Quo in the new year; having rescued a grateful Marks from the debris of a rapid departure from the UK by Bandit Lites, it appears the relationship betwixt Marks and Amber, now with added TFL, is consolidating to a stable state.

Named after their latest album, the eponymous Progress tour by Take That is breaking the boundaries of progress in more ways than one, “in simple terms we have constructed a giant man that spans the confines of the stadiums in which they play,” said Chris Cronin from Total Fabrications Ltd (TFL). “He is simply huge, so big that the main PA system hangs from his finger tips!” The ‘Big Man’ as he is known springs from the fertile imagination of Es Devlin, such is his size that Cronin knew immediately special measures would be required. “As soon as Chris Vaughan at The Production Office(TPO) confirmed us for the job the first thing I did was make a trip with Nigel Tranter (our project manager) and Malcolm Richards (TFL’s long serving Structural Engineer) to Stageco in Belgium. Even before we knew exactly how we would be building him we needed to determine how his form would interface between our structure and theirs.” The fixing mechanism is a vertical cone shape which self centres as each piece of the giant is lowered into place, “these are big cones, 100mm in diameter at their widest, solid machined steel; so as the crane lowers each major section it secures to the Stageco structure as it locates. That was always one of those unknowns, building something like this you are building a prototype, so until we got the first one to Cardington we’d never had the whole thing together and in place. Chris at TPO had mapped out a clear scheduling programme early on which helped enormously in keeping us all on track, so the time spent with Stageco and the effort of exhaustive structural modelling has all been well worthwhile. At Sunderland for example, the first Man was tested to the design limits during a major wind storm and not found wanting, and the second Man loaded into Manchester during a rainstorm of biblical proportions.” But just how do you build a man with a two hundred foot arm-span? “In detail, we adopted a design principal that the skeletal structure beneath the cladding form of the Man would be based on our Serious Medium Duty truss. Even though the truss lengths are for obvious reasons non-standard, that still gave us a known engineering building block to work with. The Man is sectional; each section is defined more by size and handling limitations than by form. The skin is triangular facets, large and small, so some sections might contain several triangles, some only one. These attach to the SMD truss by custom pairs of ‘blades’, vertical aluminium ladder type structures that follow the contour of the skin, each panel is captured by the blades in four places. One of TPO’s main concerns is logistics, assembly and transportation has to be demonstrably well thought out, fast and efficient; the big torso has large panels that are flat, so can be removed and easily packed for trucking; the fingers in contrast are dense in terms of triangle detail, and for reasons of time, need to stay together; but they still have to fit a truck. Ironically the smallest anatomical part becomes the largest piece to truck.”

Devlin’s design required that the fingers also support the main PA system so the structural demands were hugely increased. “They proved an extraordinary challenge” Cronin confirmed, “what appears as a Line Array dangling beneath his index finger is a load weighing two and a half tons that needs to transfer back seven metres to the Stageco tower. For this we developed special trussing concealed within the hand; it actually looks more impressive when the hand is unclad, well to an engineer like me it does.” Luckily Devlin had drawn to such a scale that the hands could comfortably accommodate the special trussing, “had the PA been much heavier then he’d have needed outsized hands; even so with the structures we built, and conforming to all necessary safety factors, we calculated to within 85% of load capacity.”

Fabricating his skin presented different challenges. “As you might imagine, we had to build two Men so they could leap-frog from venue to venue. Chris Vaughan gave us a twelve week build time in total; pretty audacious under the circumstances, but he proved spot on; we built the first Man in seven weeks the second in five. We employed a hundred people in all, drawing on All Alliance crew (a professional stage crew in Birmingham) and a team of eight scenic artists. We also rented an extra 20,000 sq/ft of warehouse space for partial assembly. His skin is 9mm plywood; to set the fixing blades in place and fit skin panels we assembled the relevant SMD truss structures in various ways. His head for example we built on its side, and then erected scaffold to get welders and fabricators up to his features; his cheek and temple would be approximately 20 feet above the factory floor. Then when complete, we removed the skin panels, rolled his head over, and repeated the routine for the other side of his face. Painting was time consuming; each panel has an intumescent coating for fire-proofing, then two coats of scenic artwork.”

Like all such unique projects, new lessons are learned. “The key to a project like this is anticipating eventualities. The first Big Man was in every sense a prototype, that’s why building the second one took significantly less time; you learn so much. But we also know that some prototype learning would apply in the field. As soon as the touring crew got to grapple with Big Man they’d inevitably saw ways to improve. So we built those refinements into Man two before he shipped to Manchester; and then took Man one from Sunderland and modified him in time for the Cardiff load-in. On a personal level, having watched Nigel, Malcolm, and all the guys work so hard and so well, I salute them all. Ecce Homo* as Pontius Pilate once said.”

*Translates as ‘Behold the Man’ said by Pontius Pilate at the trial of Christ

It’s in its ninth year of residency at London’s 2,000-seater Dominion Theatre, where it’s become the venue’s longest running show of all-time and reportedly grossed over £100 million, thanks also to its successful tours and residencies all over the world. I am referring, of course, to smash-hit musical We Will Rock You, a loud, tongue-in-cheek production that celebrates Queen’s music by weaving 24 of their songs into a plot about a quest to bring back rock’n’roll in a future world where musical creativity and instruments are illegal.
Set in the year 2039, Earth has become Planet Mall, a world absent of individuality and free thought due to the dictatorship of Globalsoft Corporation, which manipulates the Ga Ga Kids’ to wear the same clothes, watch the same movies and listen to commercial, computer-generated pop.

Non-conformists Galileo (played by Noel Sullivan) and Scaramouche (Amanda Coutts) are thrown together.........

<< For More Click Here >>

When one of the most well known names in international football opens a new stadium you can expect a fanfare that resounds around the world. Galatasaray’s magnificent new Turk Telekom (TT) Stadium was no exception. The opening ceremony was attended by all the teams’ faithful season ticket holders, stars from the world of international football, and VIPs including members of the Turkish Government. The ceremony even broke a few records in the presentation field, not least by suspending a structurally awkward and massive load off easily the longest truss structure ever stretched across a stadiums’ open maw.

“Well maybe not the longest truss ever, I think Lord Norman Foster might have something to say about that, but certainly the longest truss from standard production industry equipment.” Chris Cronin, the head of Total Solutions Group (TSG) who supplied the truss, is known for his precision on these matters.

“We have a well established relationship with Staras, Turkey’s leading sound and lighting company,” explained Cronin.  “And we’ve worked on many a project together since they purchased their first sticks of truss twenty years ago. Even so when they called me and described their intention to span seventy-seven metres - basically across the football field - and hang a very large three dimensional video screen from it, I let out an audible gasp. It was an ambitious project from an engineering perspective, but what took my breath away was the fact that it was scheduled for just ten days time.”

The stadium opening ceremony for which this structure would be installed was scheduled for 16th January 2011; in ten short days Cronin formulated a composite truss solution, “effectively you create a giant truss structure using existing trusses to form the chords of a super truss.” Assisted by Malcolm Richards, TSG’s long serving independent structural engineer, the two men assessed the contents of the Staras truss inventory and then crunched the numbers. “Staras own a substantial stock of our Serious HD truss, this formed the four horizontal chords, while 18” Tower truss would make the verticals. Diagonal bracing would be made using 22mm diameter wire rope.”

The resultant structure exhibited precisely all the typical tension and compression characteristics that makes trussing the utilitarian suspension solution with which we’re all so familiar.  “It also made for a visually lighter structure”, added Cronin, “A seventy-seven metre run of our Serious HD truss looks remarkably small at this length, something that pleased the TV people no end.”

Fevzi Coşkun headed up the project for Staras, “The TSG designed structure proved very easy to construct”, he said, “we had just twelve hours on the new turf before the cover sheets had to be lifted in anticipation of the opening match. It proved remarkably stable under load; the hexagonal projection surface hung from it was effectively a huge sail so I was expecting much more lateral deflection.”  Coşkun also oversaw a sizable installation of sound and lights, with speakers and lights all around the football pitch perimeter. “I have to say I was most impressed by Fevzi and his technical team”, said Cronin. “I see things like this all the time and from my perspective this was no different from a big stadium show at Wembley, and very professionally executed.”

The opening ceremony match against Ajax is already a distant memory and the major elements of that huge truss structure are now redeployed by Staras on projects all over Turkey. “It was a great day for us,” said Ayhan Özel head of Staras, “I expect Staras and TSG to be working on many more such successful projects in the future.”

Scarborough open air theatre represents a UK first for a Total Solutions EHD roof system. After winning a competitive tender for a full roof, stage deck system and storage unit for delivery in July 2010 the roof structure was frantically bought forward for an impending visit by the Queen. All the stops were pulled with a fantastic end result.

BBC News Link

The system utlizes TFL EHD truss based on an 18Mt x 12Mt configuration with extra 6mt video wall. The outer towers are upgraded to give extra height and allow the PA the also be hung from this position. A top hat system was design to allow for the shape of the speaker array and to provide some degree of weather protection.

The roof itself is complete with walling system and extra ' cowsheds ' either side of the stage to maximise the difficult balancing act of usable area whilst only having a small island to build on.

A truely inspiring project and one which we have been proud to be part of.

The remaining part of the project will be delivered in July 2010

Winner of the Gold Award for Innovation at the PLASA 08, Total Solutions Group are pleased to debut the production version of the RSC LightLock. This revolutionary new device for the entertainment industry which allows moving lights to be rigged on very lightweight hanging or flown structures.

Until now it has been impossible to hang moving lights onto trapezes, lightweight automated bars or pantographs due to unwanted oscillation in the structure.  The RSC LightLock is the first device of its kind to counteract and eliminate unwanted movement of automated lights on lightweight structures and opens up a plethora of lighting solutions.

Each unit is equipped with onboard sensors to constantly monitor its movement. There is also the means of generating sufficient inertia to eliminate that movement.

In operation, the RSC LightLock has two states, passive and active. In its passive state, the RSC LightLock continually monitors the structure on which it is rigged to ensure that it is absolutely still. When movement is detected, for example, because of the repositioning of a moving light, the RSC LightLock becomes active and the movement of the structure is instantly counteracted.

RSC Lightlock main benefits of are:

Creativity - The device enables the creative benefits of moving lights to be used in a broader variety of theatre, TV and film situations as it removes the need for heavy duty mounting infrastructure.

Flexibility - Use of lightweight rigging means that the moving light can be situated virtually anywhere and the halting of movement ensures that there are no 'out of action' moving lights.

Quiet Operation - The RSC LightLock emits low noise levels which allows its use during live performances.

Health and Safety - The RSC LightLock can reduce the need for bridges or trusses and therefore reduces the need for working at height when maintaining or adjusting a light.
Cost efficiency - Moving lights can be maintained at ground level by moving the rig down to where staff can safely maintain or adjust them.  Avoiding working at height results in significant time savings for the entertainment industry.

With everything hurtling rapidly toward a digital destination it’s as well to remember that the laws of physics are what govern our ability to stage concerts, not ones and zeros. Where can you hang your thirty tonne LED screen and how can you hang it, are two questions that make a case in point.

These are exactly the questions Rick Wade (Project Manager) from Production Technology in Dubai asked himself when he learned he was about to have his busiest run up to Christmas ever. Shows by Queen and Paul Rogers, Kylie Minogue, and George Michael, in the space of three weeks; and all of them had committed to provide a full production show, not some scaled down version for the Middle East.

“For a Production Manager like Albert Lawrence with Queen, taking a show like theirs around Europe is relatively straight forward,” said Wade. “In that the resources of companies like Stageco and ESS are readily to hand. Whatever Albert needs in terms of roof size and weight loading, they can supply. With increasing concert activity here and across the UAE we at ProTec’ saw that the time had come for us to provide a similar service. We approached Total Fabrications (TFL) who had in the past provided us with some of their ‘off the shelf’ EHD roofing systems, and we’d always been very happy with them. Now we needed something bigger and stronger, yet also just as fast and easy to set-up.”

Wade spoke to TFL, part of the Total Solutions Group, back in the early summer of 08, “It was a happy coincidence,” said group CEO Chris Cronin. “We’d only recently engaged Malcolm Richards, a structural engineer with whom we’ve had a relationship over the last thirty years, to take another look at our roof structures, and come up with ways we could apply that model to stronger, larger structures.”
What Richards’s investigations turned up exceeded Cronin’s expectations, “Malcolm looked particularly at stress management within the roof structure, and found that we could, with the addition of a few modifications, up-rate the roof loading of our existing Roof Systems substantially. This wasn’t as big a surprise as you might imagine, we’d always thought this might be the case, but the demand wasn’t there at the time we first developed the roofs, and so we’d never looked at it. We did however, plan for this increase in capacity and had always engineered the tower systems that support our roofs to exceed the roof-loading by a substantial amount.”

What ProTec has purchased is in fact two of TFL’s up-rated EHD Roof Systems that each provide a new maximum 24 tonne load capacity on a standard 25m (w) by 17m (d) stage (excluding PA wings). “The great thing is,” said a visibly enthused Wade upon completion of the Queen load-in, “as you can see this show has a 30 tonne LED screen; how did we do that? The main components of the two HD Roof systems can be combined to create a roof with a slightly bigger footprint and a whooping 40T load capacity. And the great thing is, I thought this would take maybe half a day longer to rig; to my surprise it’s a fast and easy to erect as the old roofs.”

Structural changes to TFL roof systems are in some cases, backward compatible. Existing roof owners should contact TFL direct for further information.

September 2007, Dubai, UAE:  Production Technology LLC (Protec), the region’s leading event production company staged the much awaited concert of PINK as part of her 2007 World Tour.

The Protec team, headed by Rick Wade, provided and installed the show’s set-up. This included Protec’s roof and staging system both made by Total Fabrications Ltd UK. The roof was an 18m x 12m Extra Heavy Duty system, the stage was their Arena Deck rolling staging system the only professional roofing and staging systems available in the region.
Protec has once again delivered another successful turn key event in the region due to its vast stocks of lighting, audio, video, staging, hydraulics and motor control equipment accompanied by its highly experienced team.

For further information contact:  Rick Wade/Stephen Lakin
Production Technology LLC / PO Box 71215, Dubai, UAE
Tel: +9714 3473788   Fax: +9714 3474818

Time, an elastic concept created by man so that he might boil a better egg. It’s a dimension that caught the attention of Darren Hayes when he came to pen his latest album ‘This delicate thing we’ve made’, and that in turn led to the harnessing of Willie Williams to the yoke of presentational concept. How to realise the substance of time from an idea; the sort of challenge Williams relishes.

Williams has been quietly absent from these shores this last year, “I deliberately took time off for myself following the last U2 tour.”  Time off for Williams is a misnomer, he took the chance to exercise the grey muscle between his ears in other ways, collaborations with the Kronos Quartet and Laurie Anderson have taken his mind into new unexplored territory, “Anderson recommended I consider mental images,” as opposed to the prevailing literal imagery of the overbearing LED screen. Thus he comes to Hayes tour revitalised, “Not that I’m wanting for ideas with a man like Darren, he has talents in many directions.”

Williams’ stage set for the tour, built by Total Solutions Group (TSG), comes in two main parts, a curved vaulting bridge apparently of iron and brass; and a 7 metre tall origami bird, a delicate framework clad in RP screen.
“I drew on Darren’s own stimuli for the album, he chose the bird as a metaphor for relationships; the only way to see how it works is to take it apart and once you’ve done that, even if you put it back together again, it’s never quite the same.” It’s a potent image, one Williams needed to have recreated on stage in plausible fashion.

“I went to Charlie Kail, he’s incredibly useful in taking something like this and managing it through every stage to fruition.” Williams saw the set pieces in terms of HG Wells Victorian technology, “I sent Mervyn (Thomas) at TSG some images, pictures of an old brass microscope for example, and they took it from there. They’ve done incredibly well with a modest budget. The finish to the bridge is highly evocative of the era.”

The show is conducted in four acts, the bridge features in three of them, being repositioned several times, providing a very physical change to the stage, finally projecting Hayes out over the stalls seating for an intimate exchange with his audience.
The bird remains concealed, set side-on and flat to the audience, an integral part of the rear cyc, before finally being turned outward and opened to the crowd. “Both pieces are incredibly substantial yet both move really well,” said Williams, “Mervyn made it so that Darren himself can turn the bird once it’s opened.”

Typical of Williams, he manages to extract maximum variety from what are essentially two simple objects; the bridge dramatically evokes transition from place and time. The bird is frankly jaw dropping. It startles and amazes us by it’s unexpected emergence, then unsettles us as Hayes and band tear the screen cladding from it’s delicate aluminium skeleton in the second song of act four, revealing it’s stark beauty and inner light.

“There’s a real arc to this show”, concluded Williams, “the set, the songs, and Bruce Ramus lighting really carry that.  I’m very pleased with TSG’s work; this is the first time in years I’ve made a cardboard model of a stage set, but CAD just didn’t quite show what I wanted. They’ve taken that 3D model and made it into a touring, practical reality, and it looks beautiful”.

A little further to the East, in Singapore to be precise, Total Solutions took up the challenge again by erecting 2 temporary structures for a number of different events. For CSP Productions, the company built a 10 tower curved roof system 25 metres wide x 17 metres deep x 16.5 metres high with 4 metre PA wings.

This was for Singapore’s largest ever outdoor music festival in early August where many music industry legends performed including The Stranglers, Pet Shop Boys, Shaggy, MXPX and Cobra Starship to name but a few.

The main truss and roof components were configured using Serious Folding Truss and Extra Heavy Duty Truss.

A similar roof system but this time 50 metres deep was constructed for the Show Company for a venue for a networking party on 5th July held during the recent PALME exhibition in Singapore.

Both of these structures, although of a temporary nature, catered for the growing need in Singapore for large ‘marquee’ structures with high payload and high trim height for outdoor events.

When P & O were having their ship Ocean Village 2 refitted at Bremerhaven, Germany, Micha Bergese Productions, the company responsible for entertainment activities on board ship approached Total Solutions. “They required an outdoor structural framework for their acrobats and other performers to conduct their show on board ship,” said Total Solutions Chris Cronin.

Working closely with the designer, Ron Packman of Packman Lucas, Total Solutions manufactured a globe shaped structure that would be fixed on the top deck of Ocean Village 2.

“This was a slightly unusual venture for us as we had to work under the close scrutiny of Lloyds Register who were responsible for signing off all our work from weld quality to exterior paint finish quality and everything in-between,” continued Cronin.

The structure was 12 metres high with 4 main curved trusses 12.7 wide at their equator. A curved triangular truss started as a taper from a 35mm thick base plate bolted to the ship’s top deck. At the top of the structure is a platform with a trap door. A personnel winch with wires passing through the inside of the truss via pulley diverters is used to lower and raise performers.

The structure had a 4 coat white ant-corrosion paint finish, applied by a specialist metal coating company before shipment to Germany.

“Our own staff supervised the final assembly on the quay, before the shipyard’s crane lifted the entire assembly up 14 stories to its required position,” said Cronin. “This was all achieved within a 2 day ‘window’ allocated to us by the shipyard. A good performance all round,” concluded Cronin.

From start to finish the entire project was completed between January and Easter in time for the first voyage of the refitted ship. As always, Total Solutions was able to procure, build and deliver on time and on budget!

Among the many companies honoured at this year’s prestigious Total Production Awards ceremony held on 5th February at the West Hammersmith Novotel was the Birmingham based Total Solutions Group. “We were absolutely delighted and proud to receive the award for ‘Favourite Stage Set Company’,” said Chris Cronin, the Group’s Managing Director. “It’s a tremendous thank you to our dedicated and hard working team who are always prepared to take on the next unusual challenge that this industry constantly issues.”

Hosted by Suggs, of Madness fame, a record 1,200 people from the live entertainment industry attended the ceremony. Sir George Martin, Brian May of Queen and Jeff Wayne were some of the notable industry icons who gave guest presentations.

Readers of Total Productions International Magazine chose the Award winners. “It’s a great honour to be recognised as an industry leader by your own peers,” said a clearly delighted Cronin.

Over the year, Total Solutions provided staging for Kylie, Il Divo, Muse and George Michael along with a host of other top artists. The Company specialise in blank paper design challenges such as the 74 m wide by 22 m high arched truss built for ‘Take That’ in a mere 3 weeks from concept to completion.

A sea of traditional royal yellow flags greeted, King Bhumibal Adulyadej, the King of Thailand when, on the 9th June, he appeared on the balcony of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall before hundreds of thousands of his loyal subjects who had packed the Royal Plaza in the hope of seeing their revered Monarch. As well as waving flags, the people were all wearing royal yellow shirts.

To provide a shaded seating area for the large number of official dignitaries attending the ceremony, a covered area some 21 x 30 metres was set up on the immaculately manicured grounds of the Hall by PM Center Co. Ltd. using a rooftop supplied and manufactured by Total Fabrications Ltd, part of the Total Solutions Group who provide worldwide solutions where major trussed structures are required.

The King’s appearance on the balcony, only the third time this had occurred in his long reign, was part of the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of his accession to the throne. Accompanied by the Queen and other members of the Royal Family, the visit was arranged for the King to pay homage to past Siamese Kings. A deafening cheer of ‘Long Live the King’ greeted the King when he appeared.

PM Center, one of Thailand’s leading equipment rental companies, chose to use the Total Fabrications Rooftop specialised trussing because of the ease with which it could be rigged and de-rigged. Work started just two days before the ceremony and even in spite of rainy weather, the entire structure took a mere 10 hours to rig, allowing seating, tables and decorations to be in place in ample time for the ceremony.

Just a week before the second anniversary of his arrival at Total Solutions Group (TSG) and Mervyn Thomas is appointed MD of Total Fabrications Ltd (TFL). “If more evidence were needed of the impact this man has had, this is it,” said Group Chairman Chris Cronin. “He’s a great team leader, a superb operations manager; I have every confidence in him.”

Thomas was equally enthused, “This will relieve Chris of the day to day running of TFL,” he said, “leaving him free to concentrate on what he does best; steering TSG strategically, and addressing the increasingly complex engineering demands placed upon us. So much of our work is now project led, and that’s where Chris excels; with enough metal you can engineer your way out of any problem, but Chris creates elegant solutions that are lightweight and efficient.”

TFL is the core manufacturing function of the Total Solutions Group, producing the company’s extensive range of trussing and other aluminium based products – as well as fabricating all the structural and engineering requirements of their burgeoning stage set operation. “I’ve already implemented a number of work flow efficiency changes,” commented Thomas. “Reducing materials handling has proved popular and frees up my team to focus on production.”

“His talents are obvious,” concluded Cronin, “it was one of the best days of this Company’s history when Mervyn came to join us.”

The Royal Shakespeare Company instructed Total Solutions Group to design, construct and install a bespoke bridge system for their new Courtyard theatre in Stratford on Avon. TSG worked together with the RSC and theatre consultants Charcoalblue to design a safe system of work and the incorporation of the T2 system was deemed to be desirable for this application. The 100 or so metres of bridges are a working platform which is intended for the movement of personnel to various areas of the technical gallery level along with the deployment of lighting, sound and other scenic elements as necessary for the varied performances. Of the total amount there are 40 metres of bridges which are movable. The 4 moving bridges, which are over the stage area, are supported from Verlinde BGVC1 hoists and are controlled from a Kinesys motor control system with individual local bridge control pendants for a safer observation of these moving bridges. There is a system of bumper bars and steps to accurately guide the moving bridges to their upper most position. Each bridge has 5 bars which can be used for supporting equipment. The lower lighting bar is situated below the floor of the bridge which is accessed through opening hatches in the bridge floor which run the whole length of the bridge system. The other bars are either side of the bridge and are at regular handrail heights but are adjustable should the need arise. The design is a safe system of work and to this end there are gates at various strategic points and other internal gates which can be fitted temporarily where trap doors are intended to be left open for performance reasons. The top section of the bridge has an evolution of the T2 Touring truss with a built in T2 extrusion for the lower chords and round tubes for the top chords. Inside this truss is continuous cable tray for neat routing of cables as required. Total Training were brought in to train the new staff members at the Courtyard and to assist with the RSC's working at height policy.

In July, much of the world was glued to its televisions for the biggest of all sporting events, the World Cup. Many millions of those watching in the UK, and the many countries who took the BBC feed around the world, would also have seen the fantastic studio sets designed by Gina Parr for BBC Sport and featuring Total Solutions new wave truss.

A total of three sets were designed for coverage of the FIFA event, one for the main studio in Berlin and two additional remote sets that toured Germany and were set up inside the football stadiums. The largest of these was the main studio in Berlin where the set was built on the balcony of a library overlooking the main square and Brandenberg gate. Each match was covered from this studio, and each evening the set was reconfigured for a daily highlights and news show.

“ new wave exceeded all expectation on every level” said designer Gina Parr, “I had seen only small samples of the product prior to delivery, but the truss was certainly a star”

When asked if we could design an Arch, tapered at both ends, able to span 74mts, be 22mts high, completely demountable, all to hold an inflatable light reflector and to be delivered in 3 weeks we wondered if this was one request too far. However that was the task set to Total Solutions, by Take That’s management, which we duly accepted and completed.

The Arch was a completely bespoke aluminium triangular truss, each section being tapered in 3 dimensions and having the ability to flat pack for transportation purposes. The arch was for Take That’s stadium tour after there highly sucessful arena tour, where again Total Solultions took the artisitic ideas and recreated them in metalwork to much acclaim. The arch it self was lifted into place by 2 x 80 tonne cranes and dwarfed the Stageco roof behind it.

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