Building the fair team and splitting roles

1–10 days

the installation period the site foreman owns

Stand types

Five roles

1. Project owner. Holds the whole calendar, chases the deadlines and decides. A chaser without authority cannot fill this role.
2. Procurement. The stand contract, the scope list, the payment plan and the orders placed with the organiser.
3. Logistics. Freight plan, vehicle order, customs paperwork, storage after the show.
4. Marketing. Invitation list and messages, graphic content and translation, the show page and the directory entry.
5. Site foreman. The single decision-maker on the floor during build and tear-down. This role cannot be run remotely.

These five are a list of responsibilities, not an organisation chart. In a small company one person can hold two of them, but they need to know which one they are in at the time. The real benefit of writing the roles down is that when something goes wrong, it is clear who decides. The most expensive thing to wait for on site is a discussion about whose call it is. Reading the list through together before the fair prevents most of the confusion.

Tying roles to dates

Splitting roles is not enough on its own; every task needs a date and a trigger. Late design approval delays production, late production squeezes freight, squeezed freight costs the first day of the build. Showing that chain on a sheet takes the argument out of who a delay belongs to.

A practical method is three columns per line: task, owner, date. Add a fourth — "waiting on" — and the sheet becomes a calendar.

The stand builder’s calendar belongs on the same sheet. The order we follow through design, production and site is written on our services page, and the two calendars should be laid over each other at the first meeting. Make sure the sheet is updated weekly. A calendar nobody updates is worse than no calendar, because everyone believes they are reading it. Dates are not the only thing that moves; owners change too, since leave, illness and handovers all fall inside the preparation period. That is why every line should carry a second name.

The team during show days

The preparation team and the show-day team are not the same people. During the show the stand needs selling, technical explanation and welcoming roles, and each shift needs one person responsible for how the stand runs. That person handles hospitality, cleaning, restocking and the meeting diary.

Write the shift plan before the team arrives and hand it to everyone. Unplanned breaks all land at midday, which is usually the busiest hour of the fair.

The team owes itself one meeting after the show. Held the week after the return rather than the morning after tear-down, a short review writes the next brief and shows where the split of roles jammed. At least one person from the site crew has to be in that meeting. A problem during the build usually traces back to a gap in the preparation sheet, and only the person on the floor can see it. Keep the meeting under half an hour and its output to three items; long lists are forgotten by the next fair, while three items actually get done.

How do five roles work in a small company?

Roles can be combined, but keep the site foreman separate from the project owner. On build day, being reachable by phone is not the same as being there.

Should the site foreman be ours or the contractor’s?

You need both. The contractor’s foreman runs the build; your own owner decides on product placement and sign-off.