Where has the time gone?

I just realized that it has been 4 days since the last post. Where has the time gone?

On the 2nd I did a nice little job in the field - I've been in the field all week. I see so many examples in my work of people responsible for building design, architects, engineers or consultants that don't have a clew about what they are doing. I go to a high school and have to rig the smoke vent hatches over the stage. The first thing wrong is that the school was built years ago and they are now just getting to rigging the smoke vents. The vents are a fire safety design element that should have been working from day 1. The second thing wrong is that these vents are the wrong type to have for this situation. There are two types of vents made. One type has latches at the hatch door that must be released so the doors will open. The other is spring loaded and will release when the line holding them shut is broken. The ones with the latch are not supposed to be used on stages. This type can not be connected to a fusible link nor can it be tested and reset from the stage floor. But it is less expensive than the correct one so guess which one gets installed. The spring loaded doors are the correct ones to use because they can be winched closed at stage floor level and there can be fusible links installed in the line that will break if the temperature reaches 165 deg and open the doors automatically.

I guess the architects and consultants were sick that day they taught theater design in school. Of course the building and fire inspectors don't know that much about the job they are supposed to be responsible for either. It just doesn't make sense that people in those positions don't know enough to do their jobs correctly and are not held accountable for their ignorance.

The last two days I spent rigging a couple schools in Beverly Hills. These are very simple jobs for elementary school stages with dead hung battens and some track and drapes. The original design, done by a theatrical consultant, had the schools spending over a quarter million dollars on motorized systems that the faculty and students wouldn’t have the skills, knowledge or abilities to ever use. So we came in and provided a practical stage design that will serve the true function and level of use for the stages. We saved each school about $150,000. That is a bunch of tax payer’s dollars and state money. I don’t think anyone really cares, but I’m still glad we could do this. I hate to see that kind of senseless waste. Here again I just have to wonder what the professional theatrical consultant was thinking. How can they possibly think it justifiable to install an expensive motorized rigging system into a small elementary school stage where the staff can’t utilize it, the productions don’t justify it and the students can’t and won’t learn from it? It seems to be only about ego or status or something like that.

We installed a couple very expensive motorized systems in an elementary school in San Diego last year that just blew me away. The “stage” area had a ceiling height of 13’ and the theatrical consultant designs and sells the school 3 motorized electric sets at a cost of $120,000. The travel on these sets is only 6 feet! The control system cost $60,000 and can do everything you would expect in a Broadway theater. The drama teacher doesn’t know what light fixtures should go where, much less how to set a queue. The batten will go up and will go down, that’s it. What a waste of school money. Sometimes we can help, other times we are helpless.