Topic: the organiser’s technical manual · Who needs this: every exhibitor, every show
The technical manual is the thickest document an organiser sends and the least read. It is also the only document that can stop your stand being built. Everything in it reduces to eleven decisions with deadlines attached.
This is the checklist. Each item links to a fuller guide where we have written one.
The eleven items
1. Electrical connection, in kilowatts
Add every wattage, add 10% reserve, round up to the size the venue sells. Get this wrong low and something trips on the morning of day one. How to calculate your stand electricity →
2. Twenty-four hour supply
Ordered separately from the standard connection. Needed for fridges, aquariums, servers — anything that must not power down with the hall.
3. Rigging approval
Weights, suspension points, heights, and usually the venue’s own rigger. Refused more often than any other order. What venues approve and refuse →
4. Floor loading
Kilograms per square metre, and materially lower on upper floors. Heavy product, machinery and stone need checking against the limit, not assumed into it.
5. Stand height and build regulations
Maximum height, rules on solid walls facing neighbours, and whether the back of anything visible above the dividing wall must be finished.
6. Structural drawings and sign-off
Most venues require submitted drawings above a certain height or for any raised platform, double-decker or suspended element.
7. Fire regulations and material certificates
Flame-retardancy certificates for fabrics and some boards. Asked for on site, occasionally, and impossible to produce retrospectively.
8. Water and compressed air
Separate orders with separate deadlines, and their positions have to be fixed before the floor is designed, not after.
9. Waste and environmental declarations
Waste separation and removal, increasingly with a sustainability declaration attached. See Better Stands compliant construction →
10. Vehicle access and build-up slots
Timed unloading windows, aisle clearance times and the services switch-on time. How to read a build-up schedule →
11. Insurance and contractor accreditation
Public liability at the level the venue specifies, plus method statements and risk assessments for your contractor. Venues do refuse access over this.
The deadline is the thing
Almost every item above has a cut-off, typically three to six weeks before the show, after which the order costs more or cannot be placed at all. Messe Frankfurt, as one documented example, closes electrical orders 22 days out and applies a 25% express surcharge after that.
Put the organiser’s deadline in your calendar, not the show date. It is the only date that can cost you money for doing nothing.
A note on upper floors
If your stand is above ground level, several of these change at once — floor loading drops, access runs through a shared goods lift, and waste has to come back down the same way. Why the goods lift redesigns your stand →
Who should own this list
Your contractor, in writing, with dates. On every project we deliver, the technical manual items are submitted as part of the build — rigging, floor loading, electrical declarations and waste separation are not left with the client to negotiate in a language they may not speak.
If you would rather it was simply handled, send us the show and the stand details.