By the Exhibition Stall Design editorial team · Updated 1 October 2026 · 9 min read
Short answer
A conference setups project runs through ten stages: brief, concept, revisions, design freeze and itemised quote, organiser submission, production, pre-assembly and dispatch, build-up and handover, show-day support, and dismantle. You own four of them — the brief, the consolidated feedback, the written approval and the print-ready files — and they all sit at the front. For a 36 sq.m standard-finish build that is 4 weeks, or 28 calendar days, from the first call to doors opening.
Key takeaways
- Your approval is on the drawing set and the materials schedule, not on the render. The render is the sales tool; the drawing is what anyone can be held to.
- A day lost before design freeze is a day you can still spend. A day lost after it comes out of finishing, quality control or build-up.
- The workshop owns 11 of the 28 days on a 36 sq.m build. The rest is decisions, drawings, approvals, freight and installation.
- Send the exhibitor manual with the brief rather than after the design — its rules decide what is drawable in the first place.
- Artwork is urgent, not important-later. Printing runs last in production, so late files land on the most visible part of the stand.
- Ask for a written storage inventory after the show. It is the document that makes the second edition cost a fraction of the first.
From enquiry to empty hall: the whole sequence
Complete conference setups: stage, screens, branding, registration counters and seating layouts.
Most first-time exhibitors assume the hard part is the design. It is not. The hard part is a sequence of handovers between you, the supplier, the organiser and the venue, each with a date attached, any one of which can push the others. Event managers, corporate communication teams and agencies running conferences, launches, dealer meets and public shows — and the ones who find it straightforward are simply the ones who know which four decisions are theirs and when each is due.
What follows is every stage, what the supplier does, what you do, and how long each one owns. The column worth reading twice is "what you do": four short tasks, all of them early, and each one gating something expensive. The durations assume 36 sq.m at standard finish — 4 weeks in total — and move with area and finish exactly as the planner's formula says.
| Stage | What we do | What you do | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Brief | Run a twenty-minute call and convert it into a written brief both sides work from | Answer eight questions and attach two or three reference images | Day 0 |
| 2. Concept | Return a layout, elevations and a 3D visual, or a room plan and equipment outline | Review it — and bring the people who will have opinions later | 2 days |
| 3. Revisions | Redraw against consolidated feedback, twice, at no cost | Collect every stakeholder's comments and send them as one reply per round | 4 days |
| 4. Design freeze and quote | Convert the approved design into drawings, a finish schedule and an itemised figure | Approve in writing and raise the purchase order | 2 days |
| 5. Organiser submission | Submit dimensions, height, loads and fire-retardancy certification for approval | Share the allotment letter, the exhibitor manual and any portal login | 3 days |
| 6. Production | Build, finish and print, with every material and print order raised on day one | Send final files at the start of the window, not the end | 11 days |
| 7. Pre-assembly and dispatch | Dry-build the stand, test every circuit, number the panels, pack spares and load out | Confirm the site contact, the delivery slot and where products will be stored | 2 days, then 2 in transit |
| 8. Build-up and handover | Install to drawing, test power and lighting, clean, then walk you through the stand | Attend the handover, and keep someone contactable during build-up hours | 2 days |
| 9. Show days | Supervisor on call for running repairs, lamp changes, graphics touch-ups and consumables | Staff the stand, and tell us early if anything on it needs to change | Show duration |
| 10. Dismantle | Strike, clear the site on time, and send you a written storage inventory | Clear your stock and equipment, and confirm who receives the inventory | Same night, usually |
Durations are critical-path days for 36 sq.m at standard finish, and they come from the same formula as the stall planner — 3 weeks base, one more week from 24 sq.m, two more from 54 sq.m, two for a premium finish, two for a second storey. Show days and dismantle sit after doors open and are not part of the lead time.
The schedule is soft at the front and concrete at the back. Spend your delays early, where they are free.
What each stage feels like, and what it asks of you
Below, each stage in the detail a first-time exhibitor actually needs: what arrives, what to look at, what to say, and what it costs to be slow. Read them as a chain rather than a list — none of them can start until its predecessor is genuinely complete, which is why a fortnight of indecision early is a fortnight of night shifts late.
Read the last line of each stage. That is the part nobody explains at enquiry stage, and it is what decides whether your stand is finished at 9 a.m. on show morning or still being painted at midnight.
01
1. The brief — the only stage that is free to get wrong
First contact is a conversation, not a form. The questions are always the same — which show, which city, which dates, how many square metres, how many sides open, what the height limit is, roughly what you intend to spend, and what a successful visit looks like — and the answers come back to you in writing before anything is drawn. Treat the gaps honestly: an unanswered question costs a sentence, an invented answer costs a redesign. Delay at this point is the only delay in the whole sequence that costs you nothing at all.
02
2. The concept — a layout and a visual, not a price
Expect a layout, elevations and a visual from the aisle — the view a visitor actually has, not an impossible corner angle — inside 2 days. The test to apply is behavioural: does the plan make the one thing you came to do easy? 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 brief this concept is answering, and a design that photographs well while failing that test is the most expensive kind of success. Changes cost nothing at this stage and a great deal three weeks later, so this is the moment to be difficult.
03
3. Revisions — where schedules quietly break
This is the stage where projects are lost, and it is entirely procedural. Changes to layout, graphics, finish and lighting are all still free, so the constraint is not our willingness to redraw — it is your approval chain. Collect every stakeholder's comments into a single document, resolve the contradictions internally, and send one reply. Vague feedback produces a second vague drawing and burns a round: name the element, name the problem, and leave the solution to the designer. Overrun the 4 days and the time comes out of production later.
04
4. Freeze, quote, purchase order
The design is frozen into a dimensioned drawing set, a materials and finish schedule, and an itemised quote. Insist on the itemisation: transport, installation, dismantle, electrical fittings and taxes are the five lines most often left out of a lump sum, and together they are not small. Check the quote against the drawing rather than against the render, then confirm in writing. Your purchase order releases the job to production and books the crew — without it neither the material prices nor the build-up slot is held for you. Be late at freeze and the organiser submission is late too, and that deadline is not negotiable.
05
5. Approvals — the stage with someone else's deadline
This is the only stage whose deadline belongs to somebody else, which is exactly why it catches first-time exhibitors. The organiser wants drawings, overall dimensions and height, load calculations for anything raised or suspended, an electrical load figure, and certificates proving the panel materials are fire-retardant. We file it; you supply the allotment letter, the exhibitor manual and the portal login. The risk is not the paperwork, it is the timing — a rejection arriving in build-up week cannot be absorbed, and the fallback is always a plainer stand than the one you signed off.
06
6. Production — the point of no return on changes
Once the drawings are released, the job becomes a sequence of physical operations with fixed durations — cutting, assembly, finishing, curing, printing, trial fitting — and that is why 11 days is a figure rather than an estimate. The discipline this asks of you is simply to stop changing things. A panel already cut and finished cannot absorb a layout revision, and a printed graphic cannot absorb a new headline. Supply final artwork and content at the start of the window; everything else in this stage happens without you.
07
7. Packing, spares and the road
The dry build is the most valuable 2 days in the schedule and the easiest for a supplier to skip. Standing the stand up complete, in a workshop, with the materials schedule in hand, is how a mis-cut panel or a graphic sized to the wrong frame becomes a morning's work instead of a crisis. It ends with numbered panels, a packing list, a box of spares and a loaded truck. From your side all that is needed is a contact who will answer a phone at the venue and a plan for where your products live before they go on display.
08
8. Handover — ten minutes that are worth an hour of phone calls
Installation happens in hours the venue dictates, which is why the dry build matters so much: a crew that already knows the object can finish inside the window. Expect the stand to be tested rather than simply assembled — load on every circuit, every lamp aimed, every screen and cue run through. Then come and stand on it. Ten minutes in person beats an hour on the phone, and having a decision-maker reachable through build-up is the difference between a judgement call going your way and it defaulting to whatever the drawing says.
09
9. Show days — support, not absence
Once doors open the job changes from building to maintaining. Lamps fail, laminate gets scuffed by trolleys, a counter turns out to be on the wrong side of the queue, and hall power occasionally trips. A supervisor is reachable for all of it, and the only thing we ask is that problems are reported in the morning rather than at six in the evening. Everything else that happens now is yours. A stand produces footfall and conversations; it cannot qualify a buyer, take a brief or book a follow-up, and those are the things the participation is actually judged on.
10
10. The end of the show, and the start of the next one
Dismantle is part of the scope, not an afterthought, and it is worth confirming that in the quote because it is one of the lines most often absent. Practically: valuables off the stand before panels move, a crew that strikes in reverse order of the build, and clearance completed inside the organiser's charged window so no penalty touches your deposit. What you should receive afterwards is an inventory — frames, lighting, furniture, fabric graphics — because reuse is the single largest lever on cost per show, and it depends on knowing what you own.
What the supplier genuinely cannot start without
None of these items is hard to find. They are simply scattered: brand files in one department, the organiser's paperwork in another, product weights with the people who ship them, and the budget with someone who has not been told the brief is going out this week. Collecting them in one sitting is the single highest-return hour in the whole project.
For a conference setups scope these are the non-negotiables. Anything not on the list can wait for the concept, and most of it should — reacting to a drawing is far easier than specifying in the abstract.
- The venue or hall plan with available power load and rigging points marked
- Final content, video and presentation files in the format and aspect ratio agreed
- Audience size and the seating or circulation arrangement you intend to use
- The organiser's limits on sound level, rigging, working hours and curfew
- The run order, and who is authorised to call changes on the day
- Any permissions the venue or local authority requires, and who is applying for them
| What you supply | Due by | What stalls without it |
|---|---|---|
| Budget band | The brief | The first concept lands above or below your band and a round is wasted |
| Products, with weights and power requirements | The brief | Plinths and sockets get sized by assumption, and corrected on site |
| Consolidated feedback | Each revision round | Each round answers the previous commenter instead of the design |
| Written approval and purchase order | Design freeze | Nothing is reserved — not the materials, not the slot, not the crew |
| Allotment letter, exhibitor manual and portal login | Design freeze | Organiser submission cannot be filed before its deadline |
| Print-ready artwork at final size | Start of production | Printing is pushed last and graphics are the most visible element |
| Final content, video and presentation files | Start of production | There is no time to bench-test the system as a whole before dispatch |
| Height, rigging and material restrictions from the manual | Before design freeze | The drawing is rejected and the fallback is a plainer stand |
| Site contact and delivery slot | Dispatch | Freight arrives outside the inward window and queues |
| Products, stock and samples on site | Handover | The stand is finished but empty when doors open |
If an item genuinely does not exist yet, say so and have it marked open. A recorded gap is manageable; an assumed answer is the thing that gets built.
The documents that bind, and the one that does not
This is where first-time exhibitors are most often caught out. The visual is the thing you fall in love with, and it is not the thing you are approving. Renders carry lighting a hall does not have, textures that may not be the specified laminate, and a camera angle no visitor will ever stand at. The documents below are what the workshop builds from and what the organiser checks.
Read the materials schedule in particular. "Laminate finish" and a named laminate code are not the same commitment, and the difference between them is exactly the gap between the render and the stand that most complaints are about.
- The rigging and power plan, which the venue has to accept before load-in
- The run-of-show, including who calls each cue and when the rehearsal happens
- The crew list and shift plan across every show day
- The redundancy plan — what carries a spare and what does not
- The strike schedule, because clearing the rig is charged if it overruns
The calendar, broken down honestly
Ask someone how a four-week build is spent and they will describe four weeks of carpentry. In fact the workshop has 11 days of the 28, and the largest discretionary block — 8 days of concept, revision and sign-off — belongs to you. That is where projects are won or quietly lost, because it is the only part of the calendar that can absorb anything.
The figures below sum to 4 weeks exactly, which is what the planner gives for 36 sq.m. These are the days each stage owns when nothing overlaps. In practice the organiser submission runs alongside production wherever the show's deadlines allow, and that overlap is your entire buffer — spend it on a late sign-off and it is gone.
| Brief call to first concept and visual | ₹2 days |
|---|---|
| Your feedback and two revision rounds | ₹4 days |
| Freeze: production drawings, finish schedule, line-by-line price | ₹2 days |
| Approval pack filed with the organiser and cleared | ₹3 days |
| Cutting, assembly, finishing, curing and print | ₹11 days |
| Dry build, load test, numbering and load-out | ₹2 days |
| Transport to the venue | ₹2 days |
| Build-up, testing, cleaning and handover | ₹2 days |
| Total days on the critical path, brief to doors | ₹28 days |
That is 4 weeks, matching the planner exactly — 3 base and 1 more from 24 sq.m. A premium finish adds 2 weeks for curing, a second storey adds 2 for engineering and approval, and an out-of-city venue adds transit. None of those are padding.
Exhibiting soon? Let's build your stall.
What the stand has to physically do, and whether it can
Before anyone draws anything, it is worth asking whether the space can do the job at all. The planner's split is fixed: 10% storage up to 18 sq.m, 15% above it, 5% for a meeting corner — 20% when meetings are a real goal rather than a nice idea — and the remainder for display.
The numbers to run are simple. Display ÷ 2.5 gives the visitors who can physically stand in the stand at once — 11 at 36 sq.m — and area ÷ 9 gives the staff on duty, 4 at that size. The useful outcome of this check is negative: it tells you when the stall, not the stand design, is the limiting factor, at the one moment when taking more space is still possible.
| Stall size | Display area | Storage | Staff on duty | Visitors at once | Lead time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 sq.m | 7.6 sq.m | 0.9 sq.m | 2 | 3 | 3 weeks |
| 12 sq.m | 10.2 sq.m | 1.2 sq.m | 2 | 4 | 3 weeks |
| 18 sq.m | 15.3 sq.m | 1.8 sq.m | 2 | 6 | 3 weeks |
| 54 sq.m | 43.2 sq.m | 8.1 sq.m | 6 | 17 | 5 weeks |
| 72 sq.m | 57.6 sq.m | 10.8 sq.m | 8 | 23 | 5 weeks |
| 100 sq.m | 80 sq.m | 15 sq.m | 12 | 32 | 5 weeks |
Same arithmetic as our stall planner. Staff = area ÷ 9, minimum 2. Visitors = display ÷ 2.5, minimum 3. Lead time excludes the premium and double-decker additions.
Lateness, honestly: where it hurts and where it does not
Being late is normal. Nearly every project loses a few days somewhere, and a good schedule is one that can absorb them. What decides the outcome is where the days are lost, because the schedule is not uniformly elastic — the front is soft and the back is concrete.
This is the recovery table. It is worth reading at the start of a project rather than in the middle of one, because most of the rescues listed only work if they are chosen a few days early instead of discovered on build-up morning.
| What slips | What it pushes | What you can still save |
|---|---|---|
| The brief | Nothing yet | Everything — this is the only free delay in the project |
| Feedback on the concept | Every stage after it, day for day | Cut to one revision round and freeze earlier |
| Internal agreement between stakeholders | The revision rounds | Appoint one decision-maker and let them overrule the rest |
| Organiser submission | Approval, which has a published deadline | File something plainer that clears the rules first time |
| Print-ready artwork | Printing, which runs last in production | Reduce the panel count and apply the rest as vinyl on site |
| Your own staff briefing | Nothing physical — but the result | Run it in the hotel the night before; thirty minutes is enough |
| Products arriving on site | Nothing we control | Nothing — the stand will be finished and empty at opening |
| Clearing the stand at dismantle | The organiser's window, which is charged | Pay the overrun, or have staff remove valuables while the crew strikes |
The options narrow fast. A delay flagged the day it happens usually has three answers; the same delay flagged a week later usually has one.
Tell your supplier you are late on the day you know. Three answers today, one answer next week.
The three failures worth designing around
What derails projects is rarely the design. Under-specified equipment that looks dull in a bright hall heads the list, and it is invisible until build-up. Ask the unglamorous questions early: which trades are in-house, which are bought in, and who is accountable when a bought-in element arrives wrong.
Then there is the comparison problem. Unless both quotes name the finish, the number of light fittings, the flooring and the dismantle, you are not comparing suppliers — you are comparing assumptions. Itemisation is the only fix, and it has to be asked for before the prices arrive.
Last is the missing owner. Nobody plans to arrive at build-up unfinished; it happens because ten handovers were each somebody's job and none of them were anybody's responsibility. Insist on a named manager and a dated plan with your own deadlines marked on it, at quote stage.
- Missing backup power or spare units
- 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
Getting a concept and a price
To begin, we need the show and city, the build-up and show dates, your area and open sides, and two or three images with a line on what you liked about each. From that comes a concept and a line-by-line quote, usually within 48 hours, plus a frank view on whether the remaining time is enough.
Quoted per event. We design free with every confirmed fabrication order, build in our own workshops, prepare and file the organiser drawings, and put one named project manager on the job from the first call through to clearing the stand.
- AV and recording
- Stage and podium
- Registration desks
- Hall branding
Frequently asked questions
What am I signing off on, the render or the drawing?+
The drawing set and the materials schedule. The render shows intent; the dimensioned drawings and the named laminate, paint and graphic substrate codes are what the workshop builds from and what anyone can be held to. Approve both on the same day.
What happens if I am late approving the design?+
Everything downstream moves by the same number of days, because production, organiser approval and build-up cannot be compressed. You can usually recover by freezing the structure while keeping graphics open for a couple more days, but you lose the overlap between submission and production that was your buffer.
Who handles the organiser drawings and approvals?+
We do — stand drawings, dimensions and height, structural and electrical loads, fire-retardancy certificates, and a structural engineer's sign-off where a raised or hanging element needs one. We need the allotment letter, the exhibitor manual and any organiser portal login from you.
Is someone on site during the show?+
Yes. A supervisor stays reachable through show hours for lamp failures, scuffed graphics, counters that need moving and hall power issues. Report problems early in the day rather than at closing time.
Is dismantle included, and what comes back to me?+
Dismantle and clearing the stand inside the organiser's window are part of the scope — confirm that in the quote, because it is one of the lines most often left out. Reusable elements such as modular frames, lighting, furniture and fabric graphics go back to storage. Ask for that inventory in writing; it is what makes the next show cheaper.
Can you work to a shorter timeline than this?+
Sometimes, and always by trading something explicit. The four levers are fewer revision rounds, a simpler structure, finishes with no curing time, and paid out-of-hours labour at the venue. What cannot be done is compressing the workshop, the organiser's approval or the build-up window, so a date that depends on any of those is a date that will move.
Do I need to be at the venue during build-up?+
Not for the whole window, but be reachable and attend the handover. Ten minutes standing on the stand is worth an hour of phone calls, and it is the moment to move a counter while a crew is still in the hall with its tools out.
What goes wrong most often, and whose fault is it?+
Three things, in order of cost. A lump-sum quote, so two suppliers were never pricing the same job. Feedback arriving one person at a time, so two revision rounds became four and production started late. And under-specified equipment that looks dull in a bright hall, which is settled by asking where the work physically happens rather than by negotiating harder.
How much of my own time will this take?+
Less than exhibitors expect, and it is front-loaded: a twenty-minute brief call, an hour reading the concept, one consolidated feedback session per round, an afternoon checking the quote against the drawings, then artwork and a handover. The hours that get wasted are the ones spent re-briefing because the first brief was incomplete.
Conference Setups near you
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