By the Exhibition Stall Design editorial team · Updated 1 October 2026 · 9 min read
Short answer
An octanorm & system stalls 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
- Ten stages, of which only four need you: the brief, consolidated feedback, written approval and final files.
- Consolidate every stakeholder's comments into one reply per round. Serial feedback from five people is the commonest cause of a compressed build.
- 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.
- 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.
What an octanorm & system stalls project actually looks like
Aluminium octanorm and maxima systems for shell-scheme upgrades, pavilions and budget-friendly participation.
Exhibitors tend to picture this as a creative process with a build at the end. It is closer to a relay: ten handovers, each gated on the last, four of them yours. Exhibitors, procurement teams and agencies who need a stall built on time, to drawing, and safely at the venue usually discover that the schedule, not the design, is what needs managing — and that it is entirely manageable once you know which stages are elastic and which are not.
Here is the sequence in full. It is worth noting how little of it is yours and how early all of it falls: brief, feedback, approval, files. The rest is the supplier's, the organiser's or the venue's. Durations are for a 36 sq.m standard-finish build, which comes to 4 weeks or 28 days, and they scale with area, finish and whether a second storey is involved.
| 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 | Share event, dates, area, open sides, goal, budget band and two or three references | Day 0 |
| 2. Concept | Return a layout, elevations and a 3D visual, or a room plan and equipment outline | Nothing. Read it against your goal rather than your taste | 2 days |
| 3. Revisions | Two rounds of changes across layout, graphics, finishes and lighting | Resolve internal disagreements first, then send a single consolidated reply | 4 days |
| 4. Design freeze and quote | Convert the approved design into drawings, a finish schedule and an itemised figure | Check the quote against the drawings, approve in writing, raise the order | 2 days |
| 5. Organiser submission | Submit dimensions, height, loads and fire-retardancy certification for approval | Send the allotment paperwork and anything the organiser has emailed you | 3 days |
| 6. Production | Run the cutting list, finishing, printing and electricals through the workshop | Send final files at the start of the window, not the end | 11 days |
| 7. Pre-assembly and dispatch | Stand it up complete, test it under load, number everything and dispatch | Confirm who receives the truck and where stock goes before display | 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 | Have a decision-maker reachable on the phone through build-up | 2 days |
| 9. Show days | Handle touch-ups, failed lamps, swapped panels and repositioned counters | Run your shifts, capture leads, and flag anything physical as it happens | Show duration |
| 10. Dismantle | Strike the stand, clear the space inside the organiser's window, return reusables to storage | Take everything of yours off the stand before panels start coming down | 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.
Only four stages need you, and all four are at the front. Most of what goes wrong later is something that did not happen there.
The ten stages, from your side of the table
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.
Pay attention to the consequence sentence at the end of each one. The stages differ enormously in how much lateness they can absorb, and knowing which is which is most of what experienced exhibitors know that first-timers do not.
01
1. The brief — the only stage that is free to get wrong
We ask for the show, the city, the dates, your area, the number of open sides, the height limit, your budget band and the single action you want a visitor to take — then we write it back to you as a scope document. That write-back is the point of the call, because a brief that exists only in someone's memory produces a concept nobody can be held to. Where an answer is genuinely unknown, say so and it gets marked open rather than assumed. The common failure is describing a look instead of a job. Be late here and nothing downstream has started yet, which makes this the cheapest day in the project to lose.
02
2. The concept — judge the plan before the picture
The first pass lands in about 2 days and it is deliberately about arrangement rather than appearance. Read the plan before you read the render: a visitor should be able to step in without committing to a conversation, see the thing they came for immediately, and reach a person without being intercepted — and your own team needs somewhere to put coats, cartons and laptops. Everything here is still free to change. What you will not get yet is a firm figure, because quoting before the scope is settled is how both sides end up disappointed.
03
3. Revisions — where schedules quietly break
Two rounds is almost always enough when the comments arrive together, and almost never enough when they arrive one person at a time, because round two then contradicts round one and the third round nobody budgeted for becomes unavoidable. Nominate one person to own the file, let everyone comment into it, and send it once. Be specific about what is wrong rather than what you would prefer: "the counter blocks the sightline from the main aisle" is actionable, "make it more premium" is not. The 4 days allowed here start eating into production if they overrun, and production is the one stage that cannot be shortened invisibly.
04
4. Sign-off — the point where the drawing becomes the contract
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
Approvals run on the organiser's calendar, not yours. The submission pack is drawings, dimensions and height, structural calculations where anything is raised, hung or stacked, the electrical load your position will draw, and fire-retardancy certification for the materials — plus an engineer's sign-off for a double-decker. Send us the manual with the brief rather than after the design, because the rules in it decide what is drawable. Wherever the show allows it, submission runs alongside production, and that overlap is the only genuine buffer the schedule has.
06
6. Production — cutting list, print schedule, finishing
Approved drawings become a cutting list, a print schedule and an order for every bought-in element, all raised on the same day, because a single late delivery is what turns a comfortable build into a night shift. 11 days is realistic for a 36 sq.m build at standard finish. This is where changes stop being free: a layout change means re-cutting panels that are already finished, and a graphic change means reprinting. What we need from you is print-ready artwork and final content at the start of this window rather than the end, because printing runs last and graphics are the most visible thing on the stand.
07
7. The dry build — finding problems where they are cheap
Nothing ships untested. The whole thing is assembled in the workshop first, which is why our crews spend build-up assembling a known object instead of discovering one: panels come numbered, graphics have already been trial-fitted, every circuit has been run under load and every lamp aimed. The parts that get damaged in transit travel in duplicate. Freight is then booked into the organiser's inward window, which is often a slot rather than a day, and 2 days in transit is a realistic allowance once a show week has every truck in the city heading for the same gate.
08
8. Installation inside the organiser's hours
The crew installs to the drawing inside the organiser's build-up window, which in most halls is a fixed number of hours rather than an open day. Power is tested under load, lighting is aimed, AV is run end to end, and the stand is cleaned. Then we walk you through it: where the lights switch, how the storage locks, which panel lifts off if a cable needs reaching, who to call at 8 a.m. Attend in person if you possibly can. The failure to avoid at this stage is late arrival on site that eats into build-up time. If nobody from your side is reachable, every small decision defaults to the drawing.
09
9. Show days — what we do while you work the stand
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. Dismantle, and what comes back to you
Organisers give a dismantle window and charge for overrunning it, so strike is planned as carefully as the build. Your job is to clear products, samples, laptops and literature before the crew starts, because once panels begin coming down a busy hall is the easiest place to lose a demonstration unit. Reusable elements go back to storage rather than to landfill: modular frames, lighting, furniture, and fabric graphics that reprint for the next edition. Ask for that inventory in writing. It is the document that makes your second show cost a fraction of your first, and it is the step most often skipped.
Your four jobs, and the paperwork behind them
Nothing on this list is difficult to produce. The reason projects stall on it is that each item lives with a different person — the logo with marketing, the allotment letter with whoever booked the space, the product list with sales, the budget with finance — and nobody has been asked to gather them in one place. Do that before you brief anyone and you take a week out of your own timeline.
For an octanorm & system stalls 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 approved design, or the brief for one if design is part of the scope
- Print-ready logos and graphics at final size, in vector or high-resolution form
- Any organiser restriction on height, rigging, flooring, platform depth or materials
- A named person who will be reachable and able to decide during build-up
- Weights and power requirements for anything going on a plinth or counter
- Whether elements need to come back for a later show, and who stores them
| What you supply | Due by | What stalls without it |
|---|---|---|
| Your goal, in one sentence with a number in it | The brief | The plan optimises for looking finished rather than for working |
| Products, with weights and power requirements | The brief | Counters and circuits are specified blind, then reworked during build-up |
| Consolidated feedback | Each revision round | Rounds multiply; a third and fourth appear out of nowhere |
| Written approval and purchase order | Design freeze | Material prices and the build crew are not held for you |
| Allotment letter, exhibitor manual and portal login | Design freeze | The approval pack misses a deadline that belongs to somebody else |
| Final content, video and presentation files | Start of production | The first full run happens in front of an audience instead of in a prep bay |
| 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 |
| A reachable decision-maker during build-up | Build-up | Small decisions get made without you and stay made |
| Products, stock and samples on site | Handover | A complete stand opens with nothing on it to look at |
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.
What you are actually signing off
There is a difference between what you like and what you have agreed, and it is worth being pedantic about for one afternoon. The visual communicates intent. The dimensioned drawings, the materials schedule, the lighting layout and the load calculation are the documents that get cut, painted, printed, wired and inspected — and they are the ones to read line by line.
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 dimensioned drawing set the workshop cuts from, not the render
- The materials and finish schedule, including which faces are laminate and which are painted
- The itemised quote, including transport, installation, dismantle and taxes
- The storage and lockable-unit plan, because this is what keeps the floor clean
- The delivery and build-up schedule, with your own deadlines marked on it
Where the 28 days go
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.
| First call, written scope, and the opening layout | ₹2 days |
|---|---|
| Your feedback and two revision rounds | ₹4 days |
| Design freeze, materials schedule and itemised quote | ₹2 days |
| Approval pack filed with the organiser and cleared | ₹3 days |
| Workshop production, finishing and printing | ₹11 days |
| Dry build, load test, numbering and load-out | ₹2 days |
| Freight into the organiser's inward slot | ₹2 days |
| Installation, testing, clean and walkthrough | ₹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.
Does the stall fit the plan? Check before you design it
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.
Two divisions give you the whole picture: display area ÷ 2.5 is how many visitors can be inside at one time, and total area ÷ 9 is how many staff you need on duty. A 36 sq.m stand works out at 28.8 sq.m of display, 11 visitors and 4 staff. Compare that against the footfall in your plan; if the plan is bigger, no design will rescue it.
| Area booked | Usable display | Storage taken | Staff needed | Visitors at a time | Build 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 |
| 24 sq.m | 19.2 sq.m | 3.6 sq.m | 3 | 7 | 4 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 | Drop a round and accept the second drawing |
| Internal agreement between stakeholders | The revision rounds | Appoint one decision-maker and let them overrule the rest |
| Design freeze and purchase order | Organiser submission and material ordering | Freeze the structure, keep graphics open for two more days |
| Final AV or content files | Bench-testing the system as a whole | Test on site before doors instead, and carry a spare of anything critical |
| The freight slot | Build-up, which starts without the stand in the hall | Split the load so the structure arrives first |
| Your own staff briefing | Nothing physical — but the result | Brief on the stand at handover, with the layout in front of you |
| Products arriving on site | Nothing we control | Nothing. A complete stand with no product in it is still empty |
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.
There is no way to compress a cure cycle, an organiser's inbox or a hall's opening hours. Everything else is negotiable.
The three failures worth designing around
The failures worth knowing about are process failures, not design failures. Sub-contracted builds with no quality control. That is a procurement question rather than a creative one, and the way to settle it is to ask who physically does the work, in whose workshop, with which crew — before you compare prices.
The second is scope that was never written down. If the quote does not name the finish, the lighting count, the flooring type and who clears the stand afterwards, two suppliers are not quoting the same job and the cheaper number is simply the one with more left out.
The third failure is ownership. Ten stages with four different parties involved and no single person watching the handovers is how a 4-week schedule ends up compressed into a weekend. The remedy is contractual, not personal: a named project manager and a dated schedule, agreed before the order rather than after it.
- Hidden extras for electrical, carpet or dismantling
- Non fire-retardant materials rejected at the venue
- Sub-contracted builds with no quality control
- Late arrival on site that eats into build-up time
What to send us to begin
Send the event name, city, dates, stall area, number of open sides and two or three reference images. That is enough for a concept and an itemised quote, usually within 48 hours, and it is also enough for us to tell you honestly whether the timeline you have left is workable.
Economical packages for 9–18 sq.m booths. What comes as standard: free design with a confirmed fabrication order, in-house production rather than a sub-contractor chain, organiser submissions prepared and filed for you, and a single named manager accountable from the first call to the last panel leaving the hall.
- Octanorm and maxima profiles
- Furniture and lighting packages
- Ideal for pavilions and startups
- Fascia names and graphics
Frequently asked questions
How long does an octanorm & system stalls project take from brief to handover?+
3 weeks for a stall under 24 sq.m, 4 weeks from 24 sq.m and 5 weeks from 54 sq.m. Add 2 weeks for a premium finish and 2 more for a double-decker. For a 36 sq.m standard build that is 4 weeks, or 28 calendar days, of which the workshop owns 11.
What exactly do I need to provide?+
The organiser's stand plan showing area, open sides, height limit and neighbours, the approved design, or the brief for one if design is part of the scope, print-ready logos and graphics at final size, in vector or high-resolution form and the venue's build-up, show and dismantle timings from the exhibitor manual. Collect all of it before you brief anyone — the items usually live with four different people, and gathering them one email at a time is where most of the front-end delay comes from.
What am I signing off on, the render or the drawing?+
Both, but only one of them is binding. A visual carries lighting a hall does not have and a camera angle no visitor will ever stand at, while the drawing set and the finish schedule are what gets cut, painted and printed. Read the schedule in particular: "laminate finish" and a named laminate code are not the same commitment.
How many revision rounds are included?+
Two rounds of changes across layout, graphics, finish and lighting, at no cost. The constraint in practice is never our willingness to redraw; it is whether your approvers comment as a group or in sequence. One owner for the file and one consolidated reply per round is what makes two rounds sufficient.
Is dismantle included, and what comes back to me?+
It should be, and it is worth checking, because clearance is one of the five lines a cheap-looking quote tends to omit. Organisers charge for overrunning the window, so the strike is sequenced in advance. Afterwards ask for a written list of what went into storage and what it can be reconfigured into — without it, reusable assets are untraceable within two shows.
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.
What does the first octanorm & system stalls conversation cover?+
Eight questions: which show, which city, which dates, how many square metres, how many sides are open, what the height limit is, what you intend to spend, and what you want a visitor to do. About twenty minutes. You then receive the answers back as a written scope before anything is drawn.
Do I need to be at the venue during build-up?+
Reachable is essential; present is better. Judgement calls arise in every build — a graphic that reads badly from the actual aisle, a counter on the wrong side of the queue that forms — and if nobody from your side can decide, each one defaults to the drawing. Come for the handover at minimum.
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 sub-contracted builds with no quality control, which is settled by asking where the work physically happens rather than by negotiating harder.
Octanorm & System Stalls near you
Our crews deliver octanorm & system stalls in every major Indian city.