Making a stand: The big build

With just one day to go until the B2B Marketing Expo opens its doors, Smart Display is almost ready to unveil its very own stand design. As an established exhibition contractor, being on-site is a second home to our installations team, who install at venues day in, day out all over the UK and overseas.

Having already spoken to sales manager Ben Rose,  creative director Nathan Hesslewood and project manager Emily Day, the final part in our four-part series sees us take a trip behind the scenes with our installations manager Alex McGrath to find out what’s happening right now on build day at the ExCeL.

What preparation do you have to do before arriving on-site?

Our work starts when the job is first handed over to us from the design and production team. The first thing I do is create a pre-build folder with a full checklist of everything we need to take, the technical drawings and details of any custom elements. I have to make sure I order in any materials we need to custom-build specific elements but, with limited warehouse space, this has to be scheduled so the materials arrive as we need them. We don’t want timber and boards taking up all of our space on the racking weeks before the pre-build is scheduled.

Then, ahead of the event, we schedule in a full pre-build of the stand in-house. This allows us to check the print quality, make sure the fabrics fit and that everything fits together as it should. We have a list of everything we need, and that gets ticked off as it is loaded into the van or truck to go off to site.

What happens on build day?

Everything from our checklist is ticked off as it is unloaded on-site. We have a team of joiners that we will allocate to specific jobs, more general standbuilders and staff with specific skills such as working with the electrics. The power supply is one of the first things we locate and, if there are any hanging features, we identify the hanging points and make sure that we have the carabiners that we need. If there is a hanging banner, that is the first thing to be built, because we can’t get on with building the rest of the stand until the rigging team have come along to lift that structure up and hang it safely overhead.

The biggest challenge with the Smart Display stand is the height, because we will be working off tower scaffolding. But we try to make sure that the same team who pre-built the stand are on-site so that they are familiar with the process, and can make sure that everything runs smoothly.

As experienced standbuilders, we can pre-empt when a fabric has to be stretched over a section of BeMatrix before it slots into the next one, or when the electrics need to go in first. But an inexperienced stand-builder can make these mistakes and put the stand up in the wrong order.

There are also things that we anticipate as experienced builders, such as taking blanking panels for the back of our stand if it is likely to extend above the height of the stand behind it.

Does the exhibition organiser get involved?

The organiser is mainly concerned with making sure every stand is safe, complies with the venue’s own regulations and is built within the correct timeframe. The ExCeL is a busy venue, so we spend a lot of time queuing to unload and then, usually, we have two days to complete the build. When the stand is finished, a health & safety specialist will often come round to make sure that it is sturdy and safe ahead of visitors arriving.

What do the team do while the show is in operation?

We either head to another job or head back to the workshop to carry out more preparation and prebuilds for other jobs. Although we like to have one member of the build team allocated to the same pull-out after the show has ended, it’s not strictly necessary. An experienced standbuilder can take a stand down safely by identifying the structural points that allow you to dismantle the stand in a controlled way. But having one person there who also did the build does help in taking it down in reverse. We do also tend to allocated our more experienced staff to the builds and the new members of the team to pull-outs, just because dismantling is less of a skilled job than building.

When the stand is dismantled, everything gets ticked off the list again in reverse to be loaded back onto the van and brought back to Smart Display to be stored and re-used.

If you have an event coming up, talk to us about how we can create your perfect exhibition stand #wemakeevents