Summit Steel, working for show producers The Bank, co-ordinated all production rigging for the massive opening ceremony of ASPIRE,  the Academy for Sports Excellence in Doha, Qatar. Working with show Technical Director Adam Wildi, Creative Director Simon Garrett, and Executive Producer Moira Hunter-Ross the Summit team of 12 riggers was led by Jon Bray and Chris Walker.

The ASPIRE Dome was completely bare in terms of rigging facilities, apart from the structural roof trusses, which Summit took as their starting point.Over 1100 metres of trussing and 130 Lodestar hoists later, they had a highly flexible grid system to enable lighting, sound, scenic tracking and performer flying to be hung exactly where it was needed to work with show designer Paul Bonamini’s spectacular stage set.

 “Advanced planning was again a key on this project” says Jon Bray. Summit worked closely with lighting designer Durham Marenghi, sound designer Paul Keating (Delta Sound), and Stage One’s Q-Motion team (scenic tracking & performer flying) to ensure all went smoothly during the fit up. Rigging was tricky from many angles, one being that the beams were extremely high and raked with the roof – from about 35 metres to 20 metres. Summit’s extensive stock of long chained Lodestar motors came in extremely useful here.

The very first task Summit undertook was to install a safety line system throughout the roof that ensured safe access along all the beams.As much as possible, they tried to rig the required production trusses directly off the existing roof trusses, rather than bridling, which would have taken much longer and reduced the available trim height, with many points needing hook heights of over 25 metres. “We basically tried to make it as easy to implement the rigging as possible while at the same time meeting the needs of all departments” explains Bray.

Summit hung the large VDOSC sound system in 8 main arrays and installed 10 lighting trusses, some exceeding 50 metres in length, and trimmed at up to 25 metres. They also rigged four 50 metre trusses for performer flying and an 80m long screen tracking truss as well as other scenic pieces and drapes.The get in schedule was arranged to allow Summit 3 days with the Dome Arena to themselves which aided enormously in the smooth installation of the rigging system. “It was great to have the space and time to do the job really precisely, it saved so much time later on” says Bray.

In addition to the main arena, Summit rigged in two other areas within the ASPIRE Dome – a VIP Gala Dinner featuring the Shaolin Monks and a conference room that hosted a 3 day International Sports Science Conference to coincide with the venue launch.