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Case Study

EDF - Dome 22 virtual event

  • Technical Production
  • Video Production
  • Virtual Events

Overview

At the end of 2020, EDF had delivered 18/20 of its critical milestones at its Hinkley Point C facility and successfully worked through 9 months of Covid-19 restrictions.

In December, the year was to end with the spectacular liner ring lift for unit one. Despite the fantastic achievements in 2020, there was the concern that motivation could be at risk from the gloomy European Covid situation, personal fatigue and a schedule reforecast.

The Brief

EDF was keen to end the year on a positive note with recognition for these milestone achievements and start rallying the project and its suppliers again towards the next big goal, the incredible Dome Lift in 2022.

What would have traditionally been a face to face event,  demanded a fresh and innovative approach.

It provided an opportunity to strengthen their digital comms, giving a series of professionally produced digital presentations broadcast from HPC and linking to the project across the UK and Europe. This project needed to engage five key groups of employees and suppliers over four days using live and pre-recorded footage.

In addition to the technical requirements, they wanted to enhance engagement levels and provide an innovative style and feel for the events

It's all in the details

Key challenges for this project included:

  • Building a platform to host the event accessible by all invitees, whether working from home, in the field or from office networks. Working alongside the EDF IT team, this needed to be rigorously tested to ensure those on work networks could view and enjoy the event.
  • Working remotely to create an engaging, studio-style environment from within the EDF site and its security restrictions.
  • Social distancing restrictions.
  • Live Polling to get instant engagement and feedback.
  • The time between sessions to prepare rehearse and sanitise all areas.
  • Remote callers for panel sessions.

The solution

We designed and built branded microsites hosting each of the events and the interactive elements such as agendas, downloadable videos, polling and Q+A sessions.

A studio was set up at the HPC site with LED fully branded wall graphics and widescreen monitors to link up the footage.

Result

A very successful series of streamed events enjoyed by over 3,000 people throughout the four days and capturing a large amount of positive feedback from the attendees and staff.

With more than 3,000 suppliers (2,500 in Britain) and engineers from the UK and France, we brought our project together during the pandemic by turning our building site into a TV station, operating safely in English and French with location filming, remote guests and graphics. I didn't think I'd be doing this sort of thing again after my time in TV news, but it was fun to do with our talented comms team. High participation rates and easy to attend. Although you can't beat face to face meetings, we'll be doing more of this in the future.