Event Production Company Checklist: 20 Things to Confirm Before Your Event

Working this event production company checklist

Technical event production for agencies and brands: set design and fabrication, LED walls, sound, lighting, rigging, projection and show-control crews.

Lists of nouns do not survive a busy fortnight. "Artwork" gets ticked as soon as somebody has emailed about artwork; "artwork at final size, with bleed, approved on the real substrate" cannot be ticked until it is true. Every item here carries the thing that goes wrong when it is skipped, because that is the only part of a checklist anybody reads twice.

The items are grouped into seven phases that run in order, and each phase has a condition that has to be true before the next begins. The discipline that matters is not completing a phase — it is refusing to start the next one until the condition holds. Almost every show-week disaster is a phase that was allowed to start early: production released before drawings were approved, graphics printed before artwork was final, a vehicle dispatched before anybody had looked at the build.

It is the same list whether you are event managers, corporate communication teams and agencies running conferences, launches, dealer meets and public shows or running your first show. What changes is who owns it. Pick one person on your side with the authority to decide, pair them with one named project manager on the build side, and keep one copy rather than two.

Stage, owner, deadline

Almost every late stand has a stage in it that two people each believed the other was handling. The fix is unglamorous: name one party per line, and express the deadline in weeks before the show rather than as a date, so the schedule survives the show being moved.

Read the last column first. A stage with nothing downstream of it can slip a few days without damage. A stage that blocks three others cannot slip at all. Organiser approval and print-ready artwork block the most, which is exactly why they sit earlier in the schedule than most exhibitors expect them to.

Phase 1 — constraints before concepts

Nothing later can repair a vague brief; it can only work around it. What belongs here is not taste but limits — how much floor, how many open sides, how high, how many hours of access, how much money, and what the stand has to make a visitor do.

An experience strong enough that guests film and share it, with a clear brand moment and a call to action timed in the show is the outcome worth writing down before anybody opens a drawing. Teams that skip that sentence end up approving the stand they liked the look of rather than the stand that does the job, and the gap only becomes obvious on the second afternoon of the show.

• One named owner for this checklist on your side, with the authority to decide rather than only to report
• The products that will actually stand on the stand, with their weight and dimensions — a machine that will not fit through the hall door is a problem with no on-site solution
• Who will physically staff the stand, and whether they are free every show day — a roster agreed in week one avoids a stand run by whoever happened to be available
• Budget band and exactly what it has to cover — a figure that silently excludes transport, installation, dismantle and taxes is not a budget, it is a deposit
• Brand assets at print resolution, with logo variants and Pantone or CMYK references — a low-resolution logo pulled off a website is the most common reprint there is
• What you are reusing from the last show, and where it is physically stored — elements nobody can locate are elements you will pay to build a second time
• The single visitor action that matters most: a demo, a meeting, a sample or a signature — stands designed around three competing actions deliver none of them well
• Who can say no, and by when — a stakeholder discovered in week four causes a redesign, while the same stakeholder listed in week one causes a review

Phase 2 — the two sign-offs

Sign-off means two separate things and most exhibitors do only the first. The visual sign-off says the stand looks right. The technical sign-off says the stand can be built, powered, carried, approved and dismantled. A project that has had only the visual sign-off is not ready for production, however enthusiastic the approving email was.

This is the last cheap place to change your mind, and it is worth spending an extra day here rather than an extra week later. Moving a counter on a drawing takes a minute; moving it in a workshop costs material; moving it in a hall costs a night shift and whatever the crew happens to be carrying.

• Electrical load added up circuit by circuit and declared to the organiser, with the point of supply located on the plan
• Materials and finishes named with codes: laminate, veneer, paint, acrylic, fabric, metal. A finish schedule is what stops the built stand drifting from the approved visual
• Weight and fixing method for anything hung, shelved or cantilevered, agreed before it is drawn rather than after it is built
• A dimensioned, version-numbered drawing set issued to everyone who needs it, so the site crew is not working from three different files with the same name
• Ramp, threshold and turning space checked on the floor plan — accessibility is easy on paper and impossible to retrofit
• Concept approved in writing by every internal stakeholder who could reverse it, all against the same version number
• A deliberate decision about what the stand does not do, written down, so scope does not grow quietly through the approval chain
• Visitor circulation checked on the plan: where somebody enters without committing, where they stop, and where your team stands without blocking the entrance

Changes are free until production is released. After that, every change is bought twice.

Phase 3 — approvals and pre-production

Nothing in this phase looks urgent while it is happening, which is why it is where projects are lost. Two items — the stamped drawing and the final artwork — have most of the project queued behind them, and neither is usually owned by somebody who knows that.

Organiser rules are constraints, not paperwork. They decide how high you may build, what may be hung, what may be brought into the hall and when it must leave — and a rejected submission does not cost a conversation, it costs a working week.

• Power, water, compressed air and internet ordered from the organiser inside their deadline, while the published rate still applies
• Proofs approved on the real substrate for anything backlit, fabric or acrylic, because colour shifts between paper, fabric and a lit panel
• Insurance and public liability cover in place for the build crew and the show days, in the name the organiser asks for
• The written scope frozen and signed line by line, so that what the workshop builds and what you believe you ordered are demonstrably the same list
• Floor loading checked against the hall's limit for anything heavy — a machine, a vehicle, a water feature or a fully stocked store
• Vehicle, driver and crew details submitted for passes in the format the venue's security desk accepts
• A structural engineer's certificate wherever there is a double-decker, a hanging structure, a staircase or a raised platform that carries people
• Drawings submitted in the organiser's required format, and the stamped approval received back — a submission is not an approval, and the gap between them is a queue you share with the whole hall

Event Production Company: what the order itself has to say

An order is a list, not a number. Written as a list it tells you what you are getting; written as a total it tells you only what you are paying, and leaves both double-counting and outright gaps invisible until somebody is standing in a hall.

Confirm the service scope first, then go hunting for the omissions. Freight, crew, strike and tax between them account for most of the gap between two quotes that look like they describe the same stand.

• Set design and fabrication — name it in the order with a quantity against it, not only in the render — line items are what site crews work from, and renders are not contractual
• LED walls, sound and lighting — pin the material and the finish code, because "as per design" is not a specification a workshop can cut to
• Truss, rigging and load checks — write down who supplies it and who installs it; the items that go missing are always the ones both sides assumed the other was bringing
• Technical director and show crew — check it against the venue's rules on height, load and fire rating before it is produced rather than after it is standing in the hall
• Transport to the venue and back, with the vehicle type and the number of trips stated
• Dismantle and clearance inside the organiser's window, including removal of waste from the hall
• Electrical fittings, distribution and the labour to connect them, which are frequently a separate trade and a separate bill
• Installation, supervision and the crew size that will genuinely be on site, not a nominal figure
• Reprints and small changes after sign-off, priced now rather than negotiated under pressure later

Phase 4 — before anything is loaded

Kit that has been counted is not kit that has been tested. Power everything on in the warehouse, play the real content at the real resolution, run the real cues, listen to the real audio, and only then pack — with the spare lamp, the spare panel, the spare microphone and a second copy of the content on separate media. A dead driver found in a warehouse is a part; found in a hall it is a dark screen.

The test to apply is simple. Would you be happy for a buyer to walk onto this, right now, in a workshop, with the lights on? If the answer is no, the snag list is not closed and nothing should be loaded. Dispatch is a decision, not a date, and the only person who benefits from treating it as a date is whoever is behind schedule.

• The load secured and sheeted for the actual journey, since a scratched laminate costs far more to repair on site than it did to make
• Crew travel, accommodation and site passes booked — a crew that reaches the venue without a pass is a crew standing outside your hall
• A copy of the packing list held by the exhibitor too, so a missing crate can be identified by somebody other than the person who mislaid it
• Fixings, spare laminate, touch-up paint, spare lamps, cable and tools packed deliberately rather than remembered at the last minute
• Screens and AV tested with your actual content at the actual resolution, not with a manufacturer's test pattern
• Assembled or part-assembled in the workshop with graphics mounted, so alignment problems surface before dispatch rather than at midnight in a hall
• Graphics checked against the final approved artwork file, not against the version that was approved three revisions ago
• All lighting powered up and run in — a failed driver found in the workshop is a spare part, and the same driver found on site is a dark brand wall

Phase 5 — the build-up sequence

Guard the technical run the way you would guard the show itself. Rigging inspections, power availability and the hall's own crew all sit outside your control, so build the load-in with slack ahead of the rehearsal rather than after it. A simple show that has been run once beats an ambitious one that has only been described.

The table is a sequence, not a scorecard. Nothing in it is difficult on its own; the difficulty is entirely in doing them in this order while other exhibitors compete for the same dock, the same forklift and the same electrician.

Phase 6 — show days, every morning

A show runs on a short list repeated daily. The temptation after a hard build-up is to stop managing and start selling, which is how stands arrive at day three with two lamps out, an empty brochure stand, a screen frozen on a dialog box and a lead form nobody has emptied since the first afternoon.

Work the roster from the area: one person per 9 sq.m, never fewer than two. That is about 4 on a 36 sq.m stand and 8 on a 72 sq.m one. Too few and ready buyers walk away unserved; too many and a browser will not step in at all.

• A five-minute debrief each evening: what visitors asked for, what they walked past, what to move or say differently tomorrow
• The stand cleaned and reset every morning — fingerprints on an acrylic panel are visible from the aisle and read as neglect
• A named person responsible for the stand at every moment, including lunch, the organiser's awards and the final hour of the last day
• Somebody counting conversations, qualified leads and meetings each day, so the show can afterwards be judged against something
• Open-of-day check: every lamp, screen, demo unit, light box and charging point working, done before doors open rather than after the first complaint
• Two or three agreed qualifying questions, so a thirty-second conversation separates a buyer from a bag collector without anybody being rude
• A staff roster with real breaks written into it. A tired team on day three is the actual reason conversion falls away, not the design
• Lead capture tested on the first scan of each day, and the day's leads exported and backed up each evening — a device that fails quietly costs you a day of names

Phase 7 — strike, clearance and follow-up

The last day is the one with no slack in it at all. Everything has to be out inside a window somebody else set, usually at night, usually at the same time as the rest of the hall. That is not a plan you can make on the day.

Judge the show two weeks afterwards, not on the last afternoon. What matters by then is whether the leads were contacted, whether the reusable parts can be found, and whether anybody wrote down what to change — none of which happens unless it was planned before build-up.

• Hired items returned and signed off, so rental days stop accruing on somebody else's ledger
• A written list of what returns to storage, what is scrapped, and what is couriered to whom
• Nothing valuable left on the stand during the final hour of the show, which is when halls are busiest and least supervised
• The space cleared inside the organiser's deadline, with the deposit release confirmed in writing rather than assumed
• An internal debrief inside a fortnight, while the people who stood on the stand still remember what happened on it
• Graphics kept flat and dry if the artwork will be reused, and scrapped deliberately if it will not
• Reusable elements — frames, graphics, counters, furniture, screens — inventoried and labelled as they come out, because unlabelled stock is stock you will rebuild next time
• Leads scored and followed up within 48 hours, while the conversation is still remembered on both sides of it

The ways this goes wrong anyway

The list is rarely wrong; the ticking is. Optimistic ticking — in progress, nearly done, being handled — is how a project arrives at show week believing itself finished. Evidence is the fix: a photograph, a certificate, a signature, a delivery note.

Two risks turn up again and again here: under-specified equipment that looks dull in a bright hall, and no rehearsal or technical run before doors open. Ask about them while you are still choosing a partner, because by the time either one shows up on site the options have run out.

• Content not built for the actual screen or surface size
• Under-specified equipment that looks dull in a bright hall
• No rehearsal or technical run before doors open
• Missing backup power or spare units
• Optimism about transit time, which is the one variable nobody controls and everybody underestimates
• No named owner for the final 48 hours, when every remaining task is urgent and nobody has the authority to choose between them
• The exhibitor manual filed unread, which is where most of the week's surprises were written down in advance
• Two copies of the checklist, one with the exhibitor and one with the vendor, quietly diverging from about week three onward
• Progress measured by how much has been done rather than by what is now unblocked

Ask for a dated version of this list

Tell us the show and the plot and we will send this list back with dates on it, alongside a concept and an itemised event production company scope. Two or three reference images are more useful than a long brief.

Design is free with a confirmed fabrication order, the build happens in our own workshops, and the organiser submissions are ours to prepare. One project manager carries the schedule from brief to clearance, because a checklist with two owners is a checklist with none.