Prolyte performs at Asian Games

The 15th annual Asian Games, held early December last year, took place in Doha, Qatar. The opening and closing ceremony of this event could match any large-scale international event, like the Olympic Games.

For this event, the Khalifa Stadium was transformed into an Arabic festival of colour and costume, which placed Doha firmly on the sporting world's map.
David Atkins Enterprises produced the ceremonies for DAGOC (Doha Asian Games Organizing Committee).

DAE had contacted Prolyte months before, to become main contractor for all rigging and trussing equipment. For Prolyte this prestigious project was a unique opportunity to show their capabilities for engineering large-scale projects. All in all the complete project could be divided into 3 parts; providing all rigging equipment and hardware; the Catwalk truss and support structures for lighting at the west side.

Over 80 Prolyft hoists were provided to rig all the technical equipment, including all rigging hardware and cabling; more than 7500 metres of steel wire was needed for the rigging, as well as heaps of soft steels and regular round slings. Although Prolyft hoists were used on many large scale project before, this event offered a exceptional occasion to convince a whole bunch of rigging technicians on the quality and sturdiness of this hoist. Even if the hoists did get their share of rain and sand, due to the very exceptional weather conditions during the building period, their performance was as trustworthy as ever.

The catwalk truss proved to be quite a challenge for our engineering team. The length of the whole arched structure was 270 m. With a height difference of 24 m., the catwalk truss was three dimensionally curved along a horizontal axis as well and a vertical axis. The design of the catwalk was based on the fact that it would be build in straight sections of approx. 12 m. each, which would be flown individually and connected in mid-air.
The straight sections would get their eventual 3D shape through the connection pieces to be mounted between each span. The Catwalk structure was based on the B100V truss, using dismountable handrails and a lighter type of webbing, to reduce the weight as much as possible.
Design and loading criteria for the complete catwalk structure were 100 kg/m, which offered no problem for the original structure.

As the whole structure needed to be assembled while flown, a job well done Vertigo Rigging, connection and fitting of the connections needed to be flawless.
Although the standard manufacturing process at Prolyte, witnessed by a delegation of DAE beforehand, guarantees optimal fitting through minimal material tolerances, a proof building was organised to filter out any problems upfront.

James Lee, supervising all rigging activities, was very pleased, not only with the quality level of the equipment provided, but moreover with the engineering support from Prolyte, offered from the head quarters in Leek as well as on location in Doha.

For the support structures, over 800 metres of S52V truss were used, mainly in 4 m. sections. These trusses were rigged under the western roof and were used to support the lighting equipment.

Outside the Khalifa stadium, Qatar Vision set up two Prolyte MPT roof systems were several events took place, during the whole period of the Asian Games.