Aztec Event Services helped to create an appropriately glittering atmosphere for the Marie Curie Cancer Care ‘Housebuilder Brain Game”, held at the Emirates stadium in North London, on May 2nd.

This glittering black tie event, hosted by Chris Tarrant, started with a champagne reception, followed by a three course dinner and the opportunity to win prizes in the grand raffle and bid in a live auction. The big event of the night was the celebrity hosted quiz, where guests pitted their wits and knowledge of the homebuilding sector against one another in the “Housebuilder Brain Game”. Barbara Windsor, Ainsley Harriott, Tony Christie, John Challis and Mark Clemmit all took turns hosting a round in the quiz, much to the delight of all the guests.

Aztec designed and deployed the full set, staging, lighting and PA for the whole night’s proceedings. Aztec also provided and installed the projection system and authored the multimedia content that was used throughout the event.

The fundraising event, sponsored by Homebuilder and the National House Building Council (NHBC) was a great success, raising nearly £120,000 towards the goal of giving everyone with cancer and other illnesses the high quality care and support they need at the end of their life.

Liam Bremer, project manager for Aztec Event Services was proud to be working with Marie Curie Cancer Care, “We were very pleased to be invited to carry out the technical production for such an interesting, rewarding and fun event. It was a great success and all involved should feel very proud of themselves.”

Aztec Event Services has been selected by Informa as official supplier for AV at Vitafoods & Finished Products Europe 2013, the global nutraceutical and dietary supplements industry event at Palexpo, Geneva, Switzerland, 14-16 May 2013.

Three Aztec technicians will be equipping the show with full presentation suites in the seminar areas and the 200 seat auditorium with stage set, screens, projectors, PAs, microphones and lighting. Aztec has also designed a system to create audio show guides, and twice a day up to 20 attendees will be able to tour the exhibition, receiving audio descriptions and information through their wireless RF headsets as they move between different areas.

Vitafoods Europe, organised by Informa, will be attracting Europe’s leading nutraceutical and nutricosmetic businesses to take in the latest research in functional foods and dietary supplements and get up to speed on regulatory news as well as exploring the ever expanding range of ingredients, packaging, and components available.

Leo Speck, sales director at Aztec, was pleased to have won the contract. “We’ve worked with Informa several times before on IMHX, Cross Media and TOC and we’re very happy to be working for them on Vitafoods and Finished Products 2013. We’ve come up with a great way of using the RF silent seminars kit with battery powered base stations to deliver audio tours of the whole show.”

Aztec Event Services will be providing creative and technical support at Grand Designs Live 2013, 4-12 May, ExCeL, London with a suite of audiovisual services and equipment designed to increase visitor engagement and participation at Britain’s leading contemporary home show.

Aztec will be filming in the ECO home feature area prior to the show’s opening, and editing the footage with a voice over for playback on iPads using a bespoke app that guides visitors through the salient features and technologies of the exhibit.

EventIgnite, the conference and exhibition application, is being deployed by Aztec to create a local twittersphere for use in the “Ask an Expert” feature on the show floor. Here it will be combined with a live moderation facility to allow the streaming of tweets onto one of three 42″ LED screens. Tweets will be moderated and selected for relevance, and the questions will be answered live by the experts in attendance.

In addition, Aztec will be providing, installing and supporting all the traditional AV equipment for Grand Designs Live, including the staging, lighting, PAs, displays and projection systems.

Leo Speck, sales director at Aztec, was looking forward to the event, “It’s quite exciting to be deploying EventIgnite at a major show, the social media functionality really lends itself to this application. We know that a live, moderated, twitter feed is a great tool for getting people involved, and the added capabilities we get through EventIgnite should amplify the effect.”

Nathan Garnett, event director at Media 10, was clear why Aztec was selected as official AV supplier to Grand Designs Live 2013, “Aztec has proven ultra-reliable over the years and we get great support from Leo and Ash, who feel like part of the team on Grand Designs Live. We have an enormous amount of feature content at Grand Designs Live, and so our chosen AV partner is one of our most important contractors.”

In perhaps its busiest fortnight of the year so far, Aztec Event Services has been facing up to the challenge of servicing eight varied shows across the capital, beginning with London Book Fair, April 15-17 at Earls Court, and finishing up with the British Dental Association conference & exhibition at ExCeL, April 25-27.

Aztec needed two HGVs to move the tons of projectors, lights, speakers, PAs, stage sets and display screens between Aztec HQ and all the various venues during this hectic two week period. With so many consecutive shows, the new warehouse at Aztec’s headquarters in Mitcham has been in operation 24 hours a day for the last 10 days, checking in equipment from one show, and rapidly prepping it for use in the next.

Aztec supplied and installed 10 tons of AV equipment into London Book Fair 2013, including more than 40 plasma display screens. Another of the events played host to Aztec’s silent seminar system making use of 1200 headsets. The equipment manifest for Infosec 2013 alone tipped the scales at 16 tons, much of which was booked into the Aztec warehouse straight from London Book Fair before being thoroughly checked and prepped before dispatch to the information security show.

At the same time many more tonnes of AV equipment were supplied to another six shows where Aztec was official AV supplier, including the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), Human Resources Development (HRD) conference & exhibition 2013 at Olympia, and the 2013 British Dental Conference and Exhibition at the Business Design Centre.

Aztec Event Services was out in force at Sustainability Live at the NEC, April 16-18, as official AV contractor for both this and next year’s show, providing a panoply of audiovisual equipment and services to this premiere event devoted to sustainable business management.

With three shows under one roof, NEMEX Energy Live, IWEX Water Live and the Energy from Waste Expo, Aztec’s team were spread out across the NEC working hard to get everything ready for the show’s opening. Aztec equipped six presentation theatres with PA facilities and giant plasma displays.

Sustainability Live also includes the Environment and Energy Awards at the nearby National Motorcycle Museum, and Aztec provided full production services for dinner and ceremony, including set, staging, lighting, audio and multimedia content. Aztec also provided the autocue system and operator so the presenters were word perfect, and a camera relay to screens enabling all the guests to see the action on the stage.

Aztec were selected as official AV for this major show by Faversham house on the strength of their success as official AV contractor for the Sign & Digital Show 2012, also at the NEC.

Last night at the Lancaster Hotel, we won the Exhibition News Award for the Best Employer in the exhibitions industry. We won this in the face of some very large and well respected competition each of whom would have been a worthy winner.

We are thrilled with this award and want to thank every member of Aztec – full-time, part-time, subbies and everyone else who works closely with us for helping to make this happen. We could not be the company we are today without the enthusiasm and dedication of a brilliant team of people with whom I am very proud to work.

We collected the award last night and we have not stopped smiling since.

John.

John Robson.
Managing Director
Aztec Event Services.

Aztec Event Services delivered AV equipment and services for seminars, exhibitors and the central bar area at the recent Unified Communications Expo 2013 (UC Expo), at Olympia, London on 4-5 March.

The show, organised by Imago Techmedia attracted over 4000 communications, collaboration and technology professionals. Selected by Imago Techmedia as official supplier for AV, Aztec provided full AV services for 6 seminar rooms with a standard projector and PA setup, combined with a provision for audio and projector feeds for the filming of each seminar. More than 70 exhibitors took advantage of Aztec’s AV offering, from simple laptops to digital display screens and PAs. Aztec also collaborated with Imago Techmedia to create the “speaker lounge” – a suite of computers where speakers could upload and check their digital presentation content and notes, and push them to the systems waiting in each seminar room.

Aztec sent ten technicians to UC Expo for the rig and de-rig, and maintained a crew of 7 technicians on site for the duration of the show. Six technicians were assigned a seminar room each, and one was designated a floating show tech to assist and support exhibitors.

The central, open plan, bar at UC Expo was the venue for a daily ‘flashmob’ organised by Siemens to promote its line of seminars, and featured a powerful PA and numerous speakers mounted on suspended trusses above, installed and operated by Aztec technicians. Every day a troupe of dancers would emerge from the milling crowds at a predetermined time, and the music, which needed to be heard across the whole exhibition space to draw the crowds, would begin. Aztec also provided 12 iPads for the show that were installed with Imago’s management software.

Speaking after the show, Alex Joicey at Imago Techmedia said: “Aztec was official for AV at UC Expo last year and didn’t disappoint. This year the technicians really excelled themselves, taking the tight deadlines for the build in their stride, and delivering literally faultless AV across the show.”

IMHX, the UK’s largest materials handling and logistics event, convenes every three years and IMHX 2013 has been announced for March 19 – 22 at NEC Birmingham.

Richard Noble, holder of the current world land speed record, addressing the show appearing alongside his latest vehicle, the Bloodhound SSC, and Aztec Event Services have been chosen as official AV suppliers to the show organiser, Informa Exhibitions Ltd.

With 40 conference sessions in two theatres, four halls housing more than 400 exhibitors and an anticipated 20,000 visitors to the show, the AV requirements have been varied in scale and application. The demand for transcriptions of the two popular networking seminars that are a feature of IMHX, has required Aztec to provide audio recording facilities in addition to the standard seminar AV setup of a rear projection display and digital PA.

Aztec is also supplying dozens of individual exhibitors with the AV systems and installation they require, plus several PAs and display screens for individual feature areas.

Aztec’s Chris Harris reflected on Informa’s welcome decision “We have provided full AV for Informa’s shows in the past, so winning a show that’s completely new to us is an encouraging endorsement of our service oriented approach. We’re very proud of the fact that Informa have chosen us as official AV suppliers to IMHX 2013.”

Aztec Events Services has welcomed Liam Bremer to the company as a new project manager for events. Liam joined Aztec in early February from his post at Eclipse Presentations where he was responsible for managing the venue partnership with the Park Lane Intercontinental Hotel and servicing its event requirements.

With a strong academic background in audio systems engineering and broad experience in the event industry, Liam’s expertise stretches from the deeply technical aspects of specifying and installing AV systems to the essential people skills required to manage and motivate teams of technicians.

Liam was pleased to be selected for the role, commenting: “Being chosen by Aztec for this post is a significant career move for me, enabling me to develop and establish my skills in project & team management, taking more responsibility and making more impact as well as expanding my technical skills. The working atmosphere here at Aztec is immensely supportive and positive, and its overall ethos of valuing its people and contributing to the community is very much something I want to be a part of.”

Welcoming Liam to the firm, Aztec MD John Robson explained his satisfaction at this new appointment: “When I was first introduced to Liam, I was immediately impressed by his quietly confident manner. In getting to know Liam, it became apparent that he has a superb technical knowledge and a passion for all things audiovisual. Liam’s appointment is a significant one for Aztec and I have no doubt that he will be extremely successful in developing his career with the company.”

Aztec Event Services is celebrating the success of its seven operational staff who were awarded their certificates in NVQ level 2 Business Improvement Techniques, on January 28th at the Aztec offices in Mitcham, Surrey.

These qualifications are the final piece in the jigsaw for Aztec’s recent adoption of the principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS) and the opening of its new warehouse unit. The new warehouse and processes have yielded a dramatic 89% reduction in Non Value-Added (NVA) lead time for equipment preparation.

The 3500 square foot warehouse has been designed from the ground up, following extensive analyses of warehouse workflows and processes, and has undergone an extensive refurbishment including reinforced doors, CCTV and energy efficient lighting. The trained operational staff, working in the new warehouse and using the TPS principles plus the 5S system (Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardise, Sustain) have seen increases in speed and efficiency, reductions in wastage and the establishment of an excellent working environment.

TPS and the new warehouse system enables Aztec to increase its capacity and to make long term savings. But the benefits are not limited to measures of efficiency, as the ‘Toyota Way’ also puts Aztec’s employees at the centre, recognising the importance of encouraging teamwork and professional support and development.

Aztec’s warehouse manager, Graham Farmer, was impressed with the results of the new methods and warehouse configuration, “The techniques of waste-walk analysis and careful refinements we have applied to the warehouse layout have allowed us make dramatic improvements warehouse efficiency, giving us quicker turnaround times and increasing our capacity as a result.”