Arena Structures called in the Star Events Group over the Christmas holidays to solve a last minute problem at the Boatshow at London ExCeL.

A 100m x 50m TFS structure from Arena, which formed part of a larger temporary extension for the venue for this event specifically, contained the UK's first ever indoor wind surfing arena and was located on the uneven grounds of the East car park.

Within the structure, a 70m x 30m pool, holding over 2,300 tons of water, was surrounded by enormous fans on 2 sides and spectator seating on the other two sides. As the surrounding seats and fan supports were already installed, Arena Structures required a level base over the car park, strong enough to hold up all the water in the plastic lined pool.

The requirement was first relayed to the Star Events Group on 29th December, with a requirement for installation to be complete by the 6th January. This posed a huge logistical challenge as all scaffold, timber and steel merchants were closed until the 5th January.

The deck area had to be 3 times stronger than a ‘normal’ stage floor, and The Star Events Group quickly designed a solution that used over 1,000m of structural steel trussing to form the primary supports for a total of over 6 kilometres of steel box beams that held the plywood top.

The whole installation took 15 articulated trucks and was completed in 5 days by a team of sixteen. This was in spite of the only access being through a 4m wide gap in one corner of the work area.

Due to the short notice, a lot of the design work was done on site, with The Star Events Group's design manager Steve Horton on site for part of the time, and Roger Barrett on the other days. The venue engaged Sir Robert McAlpine Design to deal with the issues of the ground bearing pressures whilst the Boatshow engaged Campbell Reith Hill to check all of The Star Event Group’s design work. The local authority engaged the PGC - Roessler Partnership to check everything again. Roger joked that he was “about to get a blackboard to chalk up the time of the next conducted tour under the structure!”

Other key players were Tez Sheals as on-site project manager and Bob Fennell as crew chief.

Nigel Beaton, Andrew 'Bomber' Phillips and Tez Sheals took turns on the hugely tedious nightshifts, watching the structure as the pool was filled. Due to the large quantities of water involved, Thames Water would only allow the pool to be filled between 9pm and 7am, to avoid dropping the mains pressure to the point were East enders couldn't make a cuppa.

Roger Barrett commented: "This was a challenging project due to the timescale and logistics of the build coupled with the complexities of the engineering, but it was a true team effort from all involved and we were delighted to be a part of that professional team."

Following the final fill, a family of small yellow plastic ducks were found bobbing about in the middle and Star Event Group’s head office issued a terse 'no comment' when asked how they got there!