Bam Construction has confirmed that an air conditioning failure that scuppered this week’s opening concert at its Manchester Co-Op Live arena was unrelated to a previously-discovered issue with ductwork.
The Co-op Live arena called off Wednesday night’s (1 May) scheduled Boogie Wit Da Hoodie show after part of an air conditioning unit fell from a gantry during a soundcheck after separating from ductwork.
Yesterday (2 May), Construction News reported that Bam had flagged up a separate issue with ductwork at the venue early last month.
In a statement today (3 May), Bam said that the earlier issue had been fixed well before this week’s incident.
A Bam spokesperson said: “Wednesday’s issue was related to the HVAC system, which separated from the ductwork.
“An earlier routine issue with ductwork was identified during noise testing at the beginning of April.
“Work was immediately undertaken to rectify the issue and this has been completed for some time.
“We can confirm that issue is completely unrelated to the postponed opening of the arena.”
Arena developer Oak View said that although it believed this week’s problem was an isolated incident “caused by a factory defect”, it had not been able to verify that all nozzles were free of such defects so had made the call to cancel the concert.
The installer, contractor and third-party inspectors will test ductwork nozzles similar to the one that caused the problem, the developer added.
Last week, a source close to the project said that SES Engineering Services was not responsible for the delay.
