Technical Production for a Live Event in London's Largest Conference Hotel

Truck 3 unloads into the East Wing

Sometimes, in the live events world, you are just a small cog in a very large gearbox, and last week was one of those times.

I was one of a twenty five strong technical team, providing production and technical support to a large, multi room, in person event at the Metropole hotel and conference centre located on the Edgware Road in central London.

We had a bit of help on the 'load in' from an additional ten temporary crew, who joined us for the first few hours, just to help unload the three trucks and push the equipment to any one of the meeting room locations spread across the 1,100-room 4-star site.

The first two trucks unloaded into the hotels West wing. A 16-storey 52-metre addition to the hotel, built in 2000, and housing the truly massive Kensington and Richmond ballrooms.

The third truck, parked outside the East wing, was unloaded directly into a generous goods lift, which took each load straight into the meeting space on any one of the five floors.

London Skyline from the Metropole Hotel

We even installed equipment in Room 23. Located right at the top of the hotel, on the 23rd floor of the 91-metre (299 ft) central tower, one of the tallest buildings in the City of Westminster and with breath taking views over the capital.

Different approach

Whilst in essence, each room was just another normal sized in person event, and the specification of this production was nothing out of the ordinary or flamboyant, when you are running two large ballrooms, eleven medium sized conference spaces, and a smattering of small meeting room systems, rehearsal spaces and free standing screens, all happening on the same day, on the same site and for the same client, there are a few things that need to be approached differently.

One of those things is managing the radio frequency spectrum, both in order to comply with legal requirements, but also to make sure we didn't cause any unwanted interference to ourselves, or any neighbours who might also be using radio systems.

Radio microphone system

Obviously the client needed several wireless microphones to be available in each room, and the final requirement was 78 radio microphone systems across the site. This needs careful management to ensure that each microphone has its own designated channel, so the microphone in one room doesn't get picked up by a receiver in another room. 

In the UK, all radio microphone usage is covered by the Programme-making and special events (PMSE) Licence, and the standard version is limited to just 12 channels.

For a large event like this one however, a temporary licence can be applied for.

This ensures that our microphones not only didn't interfere with each other across our site, but also to make sure we were not using the same frequencies as the theatre across the road.

Another thing you need to rethink on a job of this size is the logistics.

Cases of production equipment

A standard conference agenda would have the largest room (usually called the Plenary), in use first to kick off the conference with a motivating call to action. This would normally be

followed with everyone breaking out into different streams to discuss in smaller groups.

Venues need to maximise their revenue however, and so you would be a very lucky event organiser indeed if all your rooms were fully available to be set up well in advance. (or alternatively, a very rich one, if you were prepared to pay to book the rooms for unnecessary set up days)

In this case, only a handful of the rooms were available when we arrived on the set up day. Only around half of the rooms would be used on the first full day, and some only for rehearsals. Other rooms were only needed from day two, but were in use with other clients when we arrived, and so we had to continually move boxes around as rooms became available.

Given the sheer scale of this event, this was no simple undertaking. Altogether, there was enough equipment to fill three 45 feet (13.6 Metres) lorry trailers, that's up to 90 tonnes of equipment. Much of it spread over a site boasting 4,300 square metres of meeting floor space.

Sandwiches for 25

The twenty five crew all needed feeding, and this was served in the West wing, just off the back stage area of the main plenary ballroom.

For those of us working in the basement rooms of the East wing, that was a journey taking around 15 minutes and involving several flights of stairs, a long walk along the main concourse to the West wing, up the lift to the third floor, and then a significant schlep along the back corridor to the food. Grateful though we were to be fed, such was the size of the site that many of us were clocking up more than 20,000 steps each day.

Finally, after four days, the last of the truck doors was closed, and the crew shook hands and disappeared one by one into the night, departing with that familiar call of Event Technicians everywhere

"See you on the next one"

The room I was running

For more information on how we can help support your live, in person, hybrid or virtual event, please get in touch. hello@confidence-digital.com