About
The deadline is what drives us. For almost 50 years, from opening numbers at rock concerts to opening ceremonies at Olympic Games, we’ve been finding new ways to meet unmissable deadlines.
ES GLOBAL is a lead contractor for major events and projects around the world, designing and delivering relocatable architecture and structures
What We Do
- Project management, construction, consultancy, and design
- Relocatable architecture, venues, staging, structures and infrastructure
Project Management
Construction
Consultancy & Design
Our experience means we’re sought out at the earliest stages of projects by clients and creative partners to see projects through from concept to opening.
Public Sector
Since handing over an NHS Nightingale hospital with space for 2000 beds inside Cardiff’s Principality Stadium in April 2020, we’ve been called on to deliver other time-critical public sector projects, such as inland border facilities and NHS ‘surge hubs’. In 2023 ES Global was appointed as an official supplier on the Crown Commercial Service’s Offsite Construction Framework.
Using our event sharpened, fast-track delivery methods, our team can lead or support in the delivery of better public services through rapidly deployable and reconfigurable structures. Our Global Modular System can be used to build relocatable healthcare, education and other civic buildings.
As a principal contractor, we have extensive experience of project and design management, procurement, logistics, construction and the commercial requirements of delivering infrastructure for the public sector.
Sports
Timing, performance, precision… They matter to athletes and they matter to us. We’ve set the pace globally in delivering venues and temporary overlay for major international games and events.
Flexible and economical, temporary overlay is a solution that organisers are looking to increasingly to deliver events sustainably and at speed, without creating facilities that are redundant after the final whistle has blown. ES Global’s experience spans multiple event venues at each of the last three Summer Olympic Games, from shooting to cycling to golf, and opening ceremonies stretching back to Sydney 2000. Our Global Super widespan venues featured the Shooting Finals for London 2012 and Tokyo 2020.
Culture
We’re driven by creativity and design as well as deadlines. A giant rooftop bubble for a fashion show. A touring art pavilion of epic, fluid forms. A brutalist hexagonal concert arena. We help deliver headline-grabbing cultural venues and corporate events, working with architects, artists, designers and engineers to bring our client’s vision into being.
Through our expertise and innovation in the design, specification, management, assembly and dismantling of temporary structures, installations and activations, we’re constantly reinventing what temporary structures can do.
Our Global Sound Stage system is focused on the film, music and live events industries, designed as a versatile permanent or relocatable structure for live performance, recording and shooting.
Music
It’s where our business hit the road. Setting the scene for the biggest acts in music, and helping bring Live Aid to life with the stage at Wembley Stadium. At MTV’s 1994 European Music Awards in front of the Brandenburg Gate, we pioneered our own modular construction system. Easily transported, assembled and dismantled, and designed for maximum flexibility, the same system continues to form the core of staging solutions for the world’s most inventive and challenging touring shows, and for festivals worldwide.
Sustainability
Our people
ExploreOur team is made up of people with diverse skillsets and perspectives. Each one brings a different way of thinking about complex projects and a creativity that is their own.But there are certain traits they share. An appetite for against-the-odds challenges and a calm head when the pressure is on. A total focus on the deadline. A passion for collaboration with exceptional technical and creative minds. A steely commitment to getting the job done to the highest standard, on time, every time.
These are the individuals whose experience, talent and teamwork keep achieving projects of growing ambition, and propelling our company to new heights.
History
Drag to reveal our past
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1974
Edwin Shirley, a former actor with the National Youth Theatre, sets up Edwin Shirley Trucking after helping with the sound and lighting for a number of touring rock acts, including Paul McCartney and David Bowie
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1979
Edwin Shirley Staging (ESS) is established, the first company specialising in stages for rock tours, kickstarting the era of technically ambitious outdoor stadium shows
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1985
ESS builds the stage for the London leg of Live Aid at Wembley Stadium
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1992
Current joint CEO Jeff Burke joins ESS
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1994
ESS builds the first outdoor structure for the MTV European Music Awards, at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, pioneering its proprietary modular construction system. Olly Watts, current joint CEO, joins the company and ESS Japan is formed
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1999
ES Projects (ESP) is formed and builds Skyscape, launching the concept of relocatable structures. Skyscape combines the benefits of permanent structures with the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of temporary
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2000
ESS builds the stage for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games opening and closing ceremonies – its introduction to the world of major sporting events – and repeats the feat at the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games
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2008
Projects delivered include a touring art pavilion for Chanel, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, which travels to high-profile locations in Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York and Paris
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2010
ES Group designs and builds the world’s first carbon-neutral football stadium, and moves into the temporary overlay market
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2012
At the London 2012 Olympic Games, ES Global delivers the water polo arena, the shooting events venue and the park-and-ride overlay
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2014
ES Global designs and builds two hangar-like rehearsal spaces for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games ceremonies
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2016
On time and on budget, ES Global delivers Rio 2016 Olympic Games projects including the venue for the triathlon
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2018
For the Jakarta 2018 Asian Games, ES Global designs and builds the velodrome, which remains as a permanent international sporting venue after the event
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2020
In late March, ES Global is asked to deliver an NHS Nightingale hospital in Wales’ Principality Stadium. The hospital opens on 13 April. Despite a year-long interruption to preparations forced by the pandemic, the team delivers several projects for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, including venues for the shooting, triathlon and golf events.
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2022
Projects range from construction of the ABBA Arena, the London venue for the ABBA Voyage show, to delivery of major inland border facilities for the UK Government.
OUR LOCATIONS
Our reputation is global, built on several decades of delivering shows and venues around the world. Our headquarters in London drives innovation and decision-making across the group while regional offices across, Europe, North America, Australia, Asia and the Middle East allow us to navigate the particular demands of individual markets, and deliver the quality of tailored solution we’re famous for.
Our Facilities
Supporting our operations and projects around the world is our extensive 28,000m2 facility near Nottingham, within easy access of London Heathrow and East Midlands Airport, the UK’s two busiest cargo airports.
Here, we carry out test building and demounting of structures, and store and maintain equipment in a fully concreted, secure warehouse.
