Installation and logistics
How big should the site crew be
Ömer Faruk Süer · Senior Sales Manager · 3 min read · Last updated:
Short answer
How big should the site crew be?
Crew size follows the work, not the floor area. On a mid-sized custom stand the core is a joiner, an electrician, a graphics fitter and a site manager, with people added as the work intensifies. More bodies do not always mean more speed, because two people on the same surface end up waiting for each other. The crew list is derived from the steps in the installation schedule.
The core crew and its roles
There is one site manager, and they do not build. The job is holding the schedule, talking to the organiser, settling boundary questions with the neighbouring crews and taking decisions back to the exhibitor. The moment the manager picks up a tool, the schedule loses its owner.
A fifth role appears on larger stands: a materials controller. When opening crates, distributing parts to the right section and clearing empty packaging belong to one person, the fitters stop losing time looking for things. Above a hundred square metres that person pays for themselves on the first day.
The joiners carry the bulk of the work: structure, wall cladding, fixing furniture, touch-up. The electrician is a separate trade and at most venues has to be certified. The graphics fitter peaks on day three; arriving early achieves nothing, and arriving late breaks the whole plan.
Those four roles exist on every stand. What changes is the headcount within each. In our exhibition stand services the build crew comes from the workshop that made the stand, because the person who made a part knows how it goes together.
The man-day calculation
Work it out step by step. Against each build step write how many people for how many hours, total the man-hours and divide by the number of working days. What comes out is the floor of the crew size, not the ceiling.
Show days go into the sum too. The technician who stays after the build, the crew that arrives for the strike and, where needed, a mid-show handover are all separate lines. A plan that counts only build days cannot say who is on duty in the middle of the fair.
The step durations come from the workshop. How many metres of wall a joiner closes in a day, how many fittings an electrician wires, are measurable. A firm that records them plans crews realistically from the second fair onwards; a firm that does not repeats the same optimistic guess every time.
On fairs abroad, travel and accommodation enter the sum. One more person is not only a day rate but a flight and a hotel. Trimming the crew by one and stretching the build by half a day is often the cheaper answer.
When more hands slow you down
Working space on a stand is finite. Put ten people inside a hundred square metres and the ladders, tools and materials start colliding. Two people cannot work the same wall; the second waits, and waiting burns man-hours.
The last thing to allow for is fatigue. A crew working twelve-hour days three days running starts making mistakes in the second half of the third day, and those mistakes land on the most visible surfaces. Keeping the final day short is a more effective quality measure than adding people.
The answer is shifts rather than headcount. Two shifts on the critical day buy hours with the same number of people. The organiser’s permitted working hours set the limit: night work is not allowed at every venue, and even where it is, it can require a separate notification.
The second answer is workshop pre-assembly. The fewer parts to be joined on site, the smaller the crew. That is a production decision more than a staffing one, and it is the single biggest lever on site cost.
Should crew size appear in the quote?
Yes. Stating how many people for how many days makes quotes comparable; without it, the cheapest quote may simply be the smallest crew.
Does hiring local labour shrink the crew?
For handling and simple assembly, yes. Surfaces, graphics and the final check should stay with the crew that knows the stand.