Dutch-based Lion Event Support provides complete facility and technical productions and included digital surveying into their work processes recently. Time to ask about their need for centimetre accurate data at festivals and events.
Service organization
Willem de Leeuw is its owner and project manager and can therefore tell more than enough about Lion Event Support and their experiences with the UNI-GR1. “We are a service organization for the event industry, we take care of the facility and technical matters for festival organizers and event agencies. By this, we mean everything you can touch at an event. We are not about its content, but about the preconditions of an event. Visitors should have a good time and artists should be able to go on stage. That’s what we take care of.
We do this for large events and festivals mostly. Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch receives around 120,000 visitors in 11 days, the Liberation Festival 25,000 in 1 day. About 45,000 visitors come to Jungle festival in 3 days and the Circolo festival has 50,000 visitors for 10 days. These are large numbers, just like with our other jobs. An average corporate event produced by us, often has between 2500 and 4000 visitors. Thorough and accurate preparation is really a must here.”
Quick masterclass
Although the UNI-GR1 was purchased earlier this year, the preliminary phase started earlier. “Last year, our then-intern did research into these types of systems already, but I put the results aside for a while. We weren’t ready yet. In March or April of this year, I was visiting a colleague from our industry and I saw that measuring pole. I was given a short masterclass then and there and was on the phone with marXact a day later. The following week, I got a demonstration from Mustafa and had my own receiver at home a week after that. We are now making full use of this and to our full satisfaction!”
From preparations to execution
“We now start our work with the receiver, where it was with a tape measure previously. First, we measure the terrain to indicate where buildings and objects are or where we are dealing with differences in height. Then, we check whether the drawing we received is on the correct coordinates. We will fill this drawing with the fixed, existing elements that will remain and according to the actual wishes of the customer after that. Think of tents, stages, sanitary facilities, and other elements. When the drawing is finished, we put markers on it. Before we start building the event, we will stake out and use stakes sphere to get started.”
Permits and safety
Self-measured data helps with various aspects of the work that the team behind Lion Event Support performs. “A map with accurately indicated objects helps when applying for permits. Well, there are more things that come into play, but you increase your chances of success with this. Especially when you take the safety aspect into account. Safety is part of our job, of what we offer. This includes a safety plan with the exact locations of, for example, fire extinguishers, but also where escape routes are, and how wide they are during an event. Emergency exits must have a minimum width relative to the capacity of the number of people in a given area. This also increases the chance of directly obtaining a permit and is an additional reason that we survey digitally. We do this to our full satisfaction with and thanks to marXact.”
