Insights

A stand that cannot be approved is a stand that does not get built. It is the least glamorous part of exhibiting and the one that most often turns a good design into an expensive redesign three weeks before the show.

Requirements differ between halls, and they differ between organisers within the same hall. What follows is what is generally asked for in Saudi venues, and where submissions usually fail.

What is normally required

• Dimensioned technical drawings — plan, elevations and sections, showing exactly what will occupy the plot and how tall it is.
• Structural documentation for anything raised, suspended or double-decker, usually including load calculations and, for many venues, a stamp from a qualified engineer.
• Rigging details where anything hangs from the hall structure — permitted points, loads and who is doing the rig.
• Material and fire-safety information for finishes, fabrics and any enclosed space.
• Electrical loads and the distribution plan, which drives what the organiser has to supply.
• Contractor documentation — the build company’s own registration, insurance and on-site personnel.

The rules that catch people out

Height limits differ by hall and by stand type. An island stand is usually allowed to go higher than an in-line one, and the limit is often measured to the highest point including any graphic or logo, not to the structural top.

Set-back rules on shared walls. Many venues require a distance between your build and a neighbour’s plot boundary, or a finished treatment on any surface facing them. Designs that use the full plot to the line are frequently rejected on this alone.

Enclosed and covered areas — meeting rooms, ceilings, second-storey floors — usually trigger additional fire and evacuation requirements, sometimes including detection or specific exit provision.

Double-decker structures are almost always a separate approval track with a longer lead time, and occasionally a cap on how many the organiser will permit in a hall.

Why submissions get rejected

In our experience it is rarely the design itself. It is drawings submitted late; drawings that do not match what will actually be built; missing structural calculations for a raised element nobody flagged; or a submission made in a format the organiser’s manual did not ask for.

All four are avoidable, and all four cost weeks.

Read the organiser manual before the design, not after

Every exhibition issues a technical manual with its own deadlines, limits and forms. It is long, and almost nobody reads it before approving a concept. That is precisely when it matters — a height limit or a set-back rule discovered after design sign-off means redesigning a stand you have already paid to develop.

How we handle it

We prepare and submit the technical package as part of the scope, in the format the specific organiser requires, and we run submissions in parallel with shop drawings rather than after them. Where a detail is not approvable, we raise it during design — when changing it is a drawing revision rather than a rebuild.

Send us the show and the hall and we will tell you what it will require before you commit to a design. See our exhibition stand service or contact us.