Unusual Rigging wins EXPO supplier award
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Denis Bramhall, managing director at Unusual Rigging & Engineering commented: “We are extremely proud to have won this award. There were over 3,500 subcontractors working on EXPO 2020, so for us to be one of the final 3 in the health and safety category was completely unexpected and to then come first is a huge honour. We really were up against some big companies – some of which employ ten or eleven thousand people, whereas in contrast we are an extremely small team. But good things come in small packages, and our team here at URE, really did pull out all the stops to deliver several successful projects for EXPO 2020.”
As well as working on numerous areas of the venue and providing rigging solutions for several of the pavilions at EXPO 2020, URE was contracted directly by EXPO to work on two of its main stages – the Jubilee Stage and the DMA Stage. Here they supplied all the rigging solutions for production requirements across these stages, which also included uplift requirements for IP acts.
Richard Hoare, senior project manager at URE commented: “We started work on site on July 21, with rehearsals and test events taking place in September, working with a variety of acts from the pavilions themselves to international Ips. For six months, we had a 24-hour two-man team on site, both for production rigging and rescue at height.
“We also needed people on standby at all times so that we could monitor what would be going into the roof. Each time a new performer took to the stage, it was vital that we recalculated the loads applied to the structure for each uplift – and this had to be recalculated for every event and resubmitted.”
Whilst URE were initially contracted for EXPO 2020 in 2018, all contracts were terminated during Covid, with all suppliers having to re tender for the work. Richard added: “The brief did change between the initial tender and the second as the business needs were reassessed by EXPO to consider the impact of the pandemic. We are pleased to say we were awarded the contract and, with Wonderworks getting involved, the architectural brief evolved from being aesthetically pleasing to something quite spectacular that we are proud to have played our part in.”
The award was presented to the URE team by Rob Munn, lead manager, health and safety operations, who said “They worked in an extremely dynamic, challenging, high risk environment with exemplary performance, going above and beyond almost everything we asked them to do – from basic qualifications to their documentation and the way they carried out their job – they were just exemplary.”
