“It’s certainly been a crazy few months” commented Matt Kirby, Manager – Event Communications at The P.A. People. “Our Event Comms team have been hard at work over the summer months delivering on some of Australia’s most significant cultural, civic and sporting events and I’m proud to say our teams performed beyond expectations”.
The summer quite literally kicked-off with a bang with the company’s involvement in the Sydney New Year’s Eve celebrations. The provision of a fully networked communications system that spanned all the major event sites and operational control centres, including wired matrix communications, full duplex wireless communications, timecode, FireoneTM and playback distribution was complemented by the roll-out of The P.A. People new fully integrated digital two way radio fleet for logistics and production staff. A significant start to the year!
The company then launched straight into its involvement with the APIA International, where it provides distributed audio systems throughout the court infrastructure at the Olympic Park Tennis Centre. “It’s indicative of the broad range of services we provide when one minute we are assisting the most iconic New Year’s Eve event in the world, and the next we are supporting elite sporting events such as the tennis” said Matt.
The P.A. People involvement in significant sporting events continued throughout the summer. “Our relationships with both ANZ Stadium and the Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground Trust meant we were involved with all of the significant cricket matches that took place including the Ashes, BBL matches, One Day Internationals and Sheffield Shield games” said Matt.
Other significant events throughout January and February saw the company involved with audio systems for the Australian Boardriders Battle held at Cronulla Beach as well as communication systems for the Australia Day Celebrations at Darling Harbour, produced by Andrew Walsh from Accolade.
February also saw The P.A. People travel south to provide their unique expertise to the St Kilda Festival in Victoria. As one of Australia’s oldest and much loved street festivals that attracts crowds of over 300,000 people in a single day the need for reliable event communications is critical to its success.
“We provide a significant number of systems for this event, that allows all the stakeholders including essential services and production staff, the ability to monitor activities in real-time around the entire event site. This includes a fully networked CCTV system, Environment and Noise monitoring using our SPLnet product, Wired Matrix Communications and integrated two way radio communications to over 200 event staff” said Matt. “The team did a great job in very challenging circumstances given the 40 degree heat and extremely high winds that prevailed throughout the day” he said.
Straight off the success of this event, The P.A People are now deeply entrenched in planning for the installation of the Formula 1® Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, an event that once again combines a number of the company’s services into an overall solution for a major event such as the Formula 1® Australian Grand Prix . Central to this involvement is the installation of over 500 trackside speakers, race control monitoring, UPS systems as well as a number of stand-alone P.A. systems for external activities that happen around the track. “This event is significant for us in both profile and scale” commented Matt. “The installation takes place over many weeks and there is little left to chance in either our planning or delivery”.
The completion of the Formula 1® Australian Grand Prix will also signal the end of the summer season for the P.A. People, where it’s time to take stock, focus on their continued development of technology and of course to allow time for the team to have an all-important break!
