Aztec Event Services is celebrating the success of two former apprentices, now trainee technicians. Both Ryan Colbourne and Archie Mortimer, who joined Aztec straight from school as apprentices in 2011, have just been awarded their NVQ Level III Events and Live Production diplomas.

After spending one year as apprentices and one year as trainee technicians, Archie and Ryan are now both fully qualified AV technicians.

Aztec’s rolling apprenticeship scheme has been a revelation to the firm, according to Aztec’s operations director Steve Colesell: “In the past we found it quite difficult to recruit qualified and knowledgeable staff prepared to adopt the Aztec ethos and way of doing things. Our apprenticeship scheme has become a valuable route to finding the people we need, and in the last two years we’ve established a really successful pathway for conveying young talent into the company.”

Working together with NVQ trainers, Aztec has helped to develop a tailor-made NVQ syllabus in Events and Live Promotion that gives the new apprentices a flying start in the industry, whether they choose to stay with Aztec or not.

New apprentices at Aztec spend their first three months just learning the aspects of the business by preparing equipment in the warehouse, and by six months they are confidently prepping, storing and checking items in and out of the inventory. After six months, apprentices start working in the field, assisting in rigging and derigging AV installations. After a year, they reach the level of trainee technician and can rig a screen and basic PA by themselves, and as well as their technical skills they have developed a keen understanding of the industry and its various wrinkles and foibles, setting them in good stead for their future careers.

As John Robson, Aztec’s managing director puts it, “Because apprentices are inculcated into the Aztec way of doing things and its ethos of sustainability and corporate responsibilty from the outset, they’re not just excellent employees, but great ambassadors for the company too.”

Aztec Event Services is embarking on a 12 month journey to multiple International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certifications with the help of ESSA, and the ESSA Extra consultancy service, and is aiming for compliance with four ISO standards, 9001, 20121, 14001, and OHSAS 18001 by the final quarter of 2014.

These four standards will serve to strengthen and deepen Aztec’s existing commitments to total customer satisfaction, health and safety, sustainability and environmental management. The initial period of face to face gap analysis revealed many of Aztec’s processes were already consistent with the standards. Aztec will be working with the ESSA Extra consultancy service over the next year to formalise, develop and map its processes across to the criteria of the relevant management standards.

Aztec chose these four international standards as part of its policy of continuous improvement; ISO 9001 governs quality assurance and will give Aztec the opportunity to refine and improve their customer service; ISO 20121 is an event industry specific standard governing event sustainability, and ISO 14001 is a more general standard for environmental management. Attaining these standards will help Aztec formalise and demonstrate its commitment to sustainable and environmental practices. Aztec places a high priority on health and safety and thus ISO 18001, the world’s most recognized occupational health and safety management systems standard, was a natural choice.

John Robson, Aztec’s managing director, expressed his enthusiasm at the start of this certification process, “We’ve worked very hard to improve and refine our business processes, with great success, but working with ESSA Extra consultancy service has helped us select four international standards and to create a feasible routemap to successful certification.”

Aztec Event Services has deployed its Silent Seminar technology in the Deep Water Zone seminar area at the Offshore Europe Conference and Exhibition, 3-6 September 2013, at the Aberdeen Exhibition & Conference Centre.

In this extensive deployment Aztec also used its new Christie HD projectors to create a large 5m HD screen to display content authored especially for the event by Aztec’s studio, installed digital signage driven by the EventIgnite platform outside five theatres, and set up full AV facilities inside each one. Aztec also used their video feed system to stream the proceedings from the main auditorium out to the media centre and breakout rooms. iPads were placed as information kiosks on the show floor and were issued to the ops and sales teams, and Aztec also supplied a number of high tech exhibitor kits.

Chris Harris, Aztec’s senior account manager, spoke after the show, “This has been one of the most technology heavy shows we have done for some time, with all of our most innovative systems being tested in parallel, at a busy and demanding event. Having seen it all in action, from the silent seminars to the digital signage, our technicians did an excellent job bringing it altogether, and the technology itself has performed flawlessly.”

Offshore Europe, organised by Reed exhibitions, is held every two years and is the leading global platform for businesses to connect with the upstream oil & gas industry.

Aztec Event Services is gearing up for Marketing Week Live, 26-27 June 2013 at Olympia Grand Hall, London, and is finalising preparations for what promises to be a very busy couple of days.

Aztec has been selected as official for AV by organiser Centaur and the firm is also exhibiting with its own stand, promoting its products and services as powerful marketing tools, in the Live Zone, stand B212.

In a first for Marketing Week Live, Aztec will be deploying it’s newly developed digital signage solution and EventIgnite platform. This remarkable system was developed by Aztec to give event organisers a flexible, interactive digital signage solution that responds instantly to changes, engages visitors with relevant information and interactions, and is straightforward to administer by the organiser through a standard web interface.

Aztec will be running live demonstrations of its digital signage and EventIgnite platform on its stand in the Live Zone, as well as demonstrations of silent seminar technology and Aztec’s iKit solution for exhibitors.

Aztec is also collaborating with the organisers to produce digital multimedia content for an innovation at MWL, the “Agency Ask the Experts zone”. Described as “a kind of geek version of speed dating” by Marketing Week, the event will be matching marketers and the agency experts they need to speak to ahead of the show and getting them together in a whirlwind of one to one meetings.

MWL is one of the largest shows of the year for Aztec, with 14 seminar theatres requiring full AV facilities, a computer network to support the popular “speaker ready room” facility and a complete AV solution for the centre stage including twin HD projection and lighting. Installing and operating all these systems will be 18 Aztec AV and IT technicians in their trademark black and orange uniforms.

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.