PINNACLE MAKES EVENT PRODUCTION AWARDS SHORTLIST
Pinnacle Crew has been shortlisted for the Best Crewing Company Award in the 2013 Event Production Awards.
In its nomination, Pinnacle highlighted the opening of its new office in Stoke on Trent as a major development. This will be central to the company’s continued expansion in the north and will give the company a unique position to provide a more comprehensive level of service for new and existing clients in that region, further cementing Pinnacle’s position as a nationwide crew provider.
Stoke on Trent’s geographic position in relation to Pinnacle’s existing operations was a key element to centralising operations in the North. Being perfectly positioned in relation to the company’s existing Birmingham, Manchester & Leeds operations, it became an obvious choice for a Northern operations hub. With this in mind Pinnacle has now started the process of centralising certain functions to its Stoke hub. These processes include crew recruitment, crew training (both H&S and industry awareness), management site visits, quality control measures and localised client liaison. Local operations managers will continue to execute their roles as normal; however, this added level of management allows them more time to concentrate on their on-site activities and therefore the overall quality of operations.
The company also made it clear to the Award judges that as early as 2011, it uniquely identified that it would need to engage in dialogue with clients as the best way to ensure a continuation of efficient services throughout the predicted busy period of the Queen’s Jubilee and the Olympics, thereby providing them with the crew resources they would require in a period which all concerned agreed would see resources, including experienced labour, stretched to significant levels.
The company’s unique approach was to build closer relationships with their clients, with a culture of early involvement in projects being key to a successful event at this time, as opposed to the traditional methods of booking crew at short notice and in sporadic numbers, which Pinnacle identified had the potential to lead to shortages and inexperienced crew arriving on site.
Pinnacle has continued to develop and promote this new “labour partners” relationship post Olympics as they believe this approach builds a far stronger ethos of team work and a sense of pride experienced by crew on the projects that they are involved in. In addition, this type of relationship enables clients to understand that crew are one of the most important resources in the events industry, and the appointment of a crewing company cannot be left to chance – especially in 2012 when the demand for experienced event crew was increased by 60 to 70 per cent.
To fulfil this extra demand in 2012, Pinnacle actively geared up by recruiting the correct candidates and providing them with the correct training. This included ensuring all crew had the correct Health and Safety accreditations required by the Olympic venues. Subsequently, not only did Pinnacle’s London numbers increase dramatically, so did all its regional operations, leading to more than 450 crew being utilized nationwide. This provided a great opportunity and experience for Pinnacle’s regional crew to work with other branches on a more regular basis. In this way a great degree of knowledge sharing took place in 2012 – more than any previous year.
Pinnacle provided two examples of its work in its Awards submission, both of which have further confirmed the company’s belief that crew are an extremely valuable resource that is often underutilized.
The first to highlight this was Pinnacle’s appointment as Signature Systems Europe Limited’s labour partner for the installation of more than 2-million square feet of temporary floor covering at more than 24 Olympic, Paralympics and training venues, requiring more than 51,000 man hours. Most notable were the Olympic Park and the associated Open and Closing Ceremonies where the protective flooring was installed and extracted 5 times with varying degrees of tight timelines.
The company also worked with Mediatec UK installing large LED screens at televised cricket matches on behalf of the ECB. This contract involved many prestige’s international matches and included the Twenty20 series as well as the Friends Life Twenty20 Finals in Cardiff.
The crew had responsibility for assembling and cabling 30sqm and 63sqm LED screens at venues around the country, including Durham, Leeds, Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham, Trent Bridge, Chelmsford, Southampton and the Oval in London. Pinnacle achieved this requirement by developing a bespoke training course that they spearheaded and subsequently delivered to all their crew nationwide.