A Prolyte Campus Workshop, presented by Date Jonkman and Ruud De Deugd was hosted at DWR Distribution in Johannesburg from the 1st to 4th November.
The course presented intricate information to assist riggers to comply with safety regulations practised throughout the world. The topics were covered in detail and delegates were given information on the types of loading and the effect on truss, building a safe MPT or ST Tower, slinging of truss, the process of calculating applied forces and predicting the effects of environmental influences and the basic preconditions to safely build a roof structure.
We asked everyone for their feedback:
Prolyte’s Ruud de Deugd and Date Jonkman.
Date Jonkman (Prolyte): “The South African delegates are not behind in rigging. World-wide we are all at the same level… we are all consistently incompetent,” he teases. “We don’t know what we don’t know and that’s the main thing in our business, wherever you are. The delegates were impressed to learn things they did not know. The guys who know roof systems also learnt. This is what it is all about.”
Ruud de Deugd (Prolyte)
Ruud joined the industry as a sound engineer in 2001 and as a rigger and stage builder since 2008. He has a great deal of experience and has furthered this with doing, reading and doing some more. “The people were good and Robert Izzett from DWR took good care of us,” said Ruud. The food was good. The most fun part we had was after the course when I heard someone say, those guys know what they are talking about.”
Peter Abrahamse from Gearhouse
Peter Abrahamse (Gearhouse): “I think the course has been brilliant. There is a lot of stuff that we have been doing and we realize now that there are alternate ways of doing things. It’s a learning curve and it’s awesome. We got to ask a lot of questions and receive answers back immediately, which was really great.”
Anthony Banks from Gearhouse
Anthony Banks (Gearhouse): “I really think truss should not be sold unless the person completes this course. There is a lot of information that is very good – people don’t always realize the complexity of trussing systems. There are many things that uniformed safety officers want, that actually at the end of the day could result in creating an issue. It’s a very good course.”
Pule Mofokeng from Intelligent Sound
Pule Mofokeng (Intelligent Sound): “The course was very important. There are some things that we have never known since working with Prolyte trussing. What was very important was learning about the safety aspect and then taking care of trussing from a maintenance point of view.”
Godfrey Dhlamini from Blond Productions
Godfrey Dhlamini (Blond Productions): “For me the training helped me a lot to refresh, especially as I have been doing this for years and years. It helped me to remember things like checkingthe truss and maintenance. I think I have grown a lot, it has helped me with my rigging and I understand a lot better than before.”
MGG’s Leslie Wahl and Grant Nortman
Leslie Wahl (MGG Productions) : “I found the course very interesting and I think our team learnt a lot. I’ve been doing structures for the past 8 years. It’s like I told Duncan Riley of DWR, there is no such thing as bad training. You always learn something.”
Grant Nortman (MGG Productions): “I found it very interesting and it opened my eyes to certain things within the industry which people sometimes look past. We’ll definitely be able to make use of what we learnt at the training in the future.”
Themba Dube from Carnival City
Themba Dube (Carnival City): “The course was fantastic. I learnt a lot about the trusses, how to build the structures, weight, size, and wind impact.”
Brenton Lycett (Marshall Music): “The course was very informative. At Marshall Music I mainly sell equipment but you need to know and have this training when someone wants to buy truss from you. You need to make sure that what you’re selling them actually stays up, that people adhere to codes.I found it very useful.”
