Underpinning

Just a couple of pictures to show the level of underpinning that is needed to hold the new wing to the side of the existing building.

Festival over, work resumes

I am delighted to say that the 2007 Edinburgh International Festival (Usher Hall programme)not only happened, but happened in style. A monumental effort by our staff, the festival and the contractor went into getting the hall ready. With just a day to turn things around we managed to get to opening night on Friday 10th August and celebrate with a full house!

The Festival programme was amazing. My personal highlights were the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela (for their sheer exuberance and love of playing) and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (for sheer musical brilliance). We welcomed the best part of 40,000 people through the hall. To be honest, the hall was really showing it's age and we tried to make it look as nice as we could. The festival got in floral arrangements and went to town on posters outside. The St Petersburg Brass Quintet added to the party atmosphere as always. However, the toilets caused us more problems than usual - I found out during the festival that a while back we had our water supply pipe downgraded as part of a Council utility saving excercise. This meant we had a 20mm (yes millimetre) pipe supplying the building instead our old 65mm one. Hence, problem with water pressure and cisterns not refilling quickly enough. The efforts by our staff to make the programme work under difficult circumstances was incredible.

With the Royal Scottish National Orchestra rounding off the Festival, we then had 1 day to clear everything out of the hall to allow the contractor back in on Monday 3rd September. Which, if you ignore an old freezer stuck in the basement and half-ton marble bust of Beethoven, we did.

Work now resumes with more piling (see previous entries) and the continued dig of the basement area around the outside of the hall. The above photo is taken looking towards what was the box office entrance last week.