Topic: reading an organiser’s build-up timetable · Who needs this: anyone whose stand has to be finished before doors open
Every organiser sends a build-up schedule. Most exhibitors read the date at the top and file it. The schedule is the single document that decides whether your stand is finished on time, and it contains four numbers that matter more than the rest.
The four numbers to find first
1. When the hall opens to contractors
Not when the show opens. On a short build this may be 48 hours before doors, and on a very short one, 24. Everything else compresses around this number.
2. Your vehicle access slot
Large halls run timed unloading. You get a window — sometimes an hour — and if you miss it you rejoin the queue behind everyone else. This is the number that most often ruins a build, and it is the one people read last.
3. When the aisles must be clear
Usually several hours before doors. Carpet goes down, waste is removed, and after that moment you cannot bring material across the hall. Anything not on your stand by then is not going on it.
4. The services switch-on time
Power and water are commissioned on the organiser’s schedule, not yours. Planning to test lighting the night before only works if the supply is live the night before.
Why a two-day build is a different job from a four-day build
It is not the same job done faster. It is a different sequence.
On four days you build, then finish, then snag. On two days there is no snagging phase — the finish has to be right first time, which means more of the stand is completed in the workshop and less on site. Panels arrive painted and wrapped. Graphics are applied before transport where they will survive it. The wiring loom is made up and tested before it leaves.
At CPHI Milan we build nine stands across six halls in two days, four of them on the first floor. That schedule is only possible because almost nothing is fabricated on site.
Sequencing backwards from doors open
Write the schedule in reverse. Doors open at 09:00 on Tuesday, so:
- Cleaning and final snag — Monday evening
- Furniture, product and graphics dressing — Monday afternoon
- Lighting commissioned and aimed — Monday morning, once power is live
- Structure complete and flooring down — Sunday evening
- Walls and ceiling elements up — Sunday
- Unload and set out — Sunday, in your slot
Every task that cannot start until another finishes is a risk. The ones that bite: power going live late, a goods lift shared with forty other stands, and graphics that arrive on a separate vehicle.
Multiple stands at one show
Simultaneity is harder than size. Three stands in three halls share one build-up window, one set of access slots, one crew pool and one delivery route — and the halls are not adjacent, so material cannot be staged in one place and a crew finishing in Hall 6 is not instantly useful in Hall 4.
We have run three stands at a single Fi Europe edition in Frankfurt, three at one CPHI Milan edition, six at one Vitafoods Europe, and sixty-seven in one pavilion at SIEMA Casablanca. In every case the constraint was the schedule, not the fabrication.
What to ask your contractor before you sign
- How much of this stand is finished before it leaves your workshop?
- How many people will be on site, and on which days?
- Who is here on the last night?
- What is your plan if the vehicle slot is missed?
- Who signs off the venue paperwork, and by when?
A contractor who cannot answer the last-night question has not thought about the schedule.
Dismantling is in the schedule too
Breakdown has its own timetable, and halls charge for overrun. If the stand is reusable, dismantling carefully matters more than dismantling fast — see where to save money on a stand and installation and dismantling.
Tell us your show and your build-up window and we will tell you whether the design fits it.
Related: Freight, customs and deadlines · Rigging approval · Documented projects
Part of the exhibitor guide series. Start with the technical manual checklist — eleven things with deadlines attached.