Speakers

John Wilson is the founder and director of Special Projects Europe, a specialist site and technical management company, focusing on event infrastructure procurement and delivery for major sporting and music events, with offices in the UK, Ireland and Saudi Arabia.

Starting his career in 1990 at Edwin Shirley Staging, now ES Global Solutions, he spent 16 years developing an understanding of client concepts and structural designs, logistics scheduling and budget management.

In 2006, John formed Special Projects, taking those skills into site management. Special Projects delivers site planning, structure overlay, supplier contracting, build scheduling and logistics, procurement and budget control on events as varied as TRNSMT and Summer Sessions festivals in Scotland to F1 and Balad Beast in Jeddah and the MDL Beasts flagship festival Soundstorm in Riyadh since 2021.

In the past 3 years John has also developed and delivered training programmes in Saudi Arabia for the General Entertainment Authority (GEA) and MDL Beast’s BeastED programme. This training recognises the need to develop a freelance industry in site management and make the industry more sustainable in country.

To date, 80 students have passed through the courses with 25 plus students having found regular work on Special Projects jobs.