Exhibition Stand Builder for DSEI 2027

Every person who builds at DSEI is named before the show

At most shows a contractor pass gets the build crew through the door. At DSEI it does not: the organiser applies the same rule to stand builders as to visitors and delegates, pre-registration by name, a photographic badge, and no registration facility on site during the open days.

Pre-registration covers the build crew, not just your team

Under the organiser's admission policy, all stand personnel, contractors and service providers pre-register, and only the official badge worn by the person named on it permits entry. A badge cannot be passed to a colleague, and nobody under 18 is admitted. For an exhibitor this means the joiners, electricians and graphics fitters who build the stand are part of the registration list weeks before the tenancy, with the identity details the organiser asks for.

Why the open-day rule matters to a build programme

The organiser's policy has no on-site registration during the exhibition open days. A crew member who is not on the list does not get in, and a stand that needs a repair or a graphic swap on day two is serviced by whoever was registered in advance. We plan the crew list with that in mind: the people who install the stand and the people who cover it during the show are named on one submission, so the stand is looked after for all four days without a gap.

What we put on your desk, and when

We give you the crew names, roles and identity details in the organiser's format, on the manual's date, and we keep the same people on the job from build-up to breakdown. The list goes in under your exhibitor registration, as the organiser requires; keeping it accurate, early and stable is ours.

What goes on the stand graphics is a compliance question

At most shows the artwork review is about brand and legibility. At DSEI it is also about the organiser's compliance and eligibility policy, which sits over every product shown or promoted on the stand.

The policy, and how it reaches the artwork

The organiser's compliance and eligibility policy reminds exhibitors that promoting, procuring or brokering an item on display may need an export-control or import licence from the relevant government authority, and it sets restrictions on what can be depicted in stand graphics and literature. In practice this puts a check on every artwork proof before print: what is shown, how it is described, and whether your compliance lead has signed it off. We put your compliance sign-off into the graphics schedule before print, so a panel is not reprinted at the venue because a product image was withdrawn late.

Closed rooms, and conversations that stay inside them

Defence exhibitors ask for something a travel or construction show rarely does: fully enclosed meeting space on a stand that still reads as open from the aisle. Closed meeting rooms, a reception that controls who comes through, lockable storage for samples and literature, and a screen wall that carries approved content only are design decisions taken at the first drawing. Our bespoke joinery builds those rooms as solid structure; on the DUM FLEX^™ frame the same rooms are formed with solid infill panels and lockable doors.

International pavilions, and the stand inside one

DSEI groups a large part of its floor into national pavilions. The organiser lists participating countries with an official pavilion, Türkiye among them, and most of those pavilions are organised by an appointed trade body or commercial agent rather than by the exhibitors themselves.

Two ways to exhibit at DSEI, two different briefs

An exhibitor taking its own space-only plot briefs a stand builder directly and owns every decision from footprint to finish. An exhibitor inside a national pavilion receives a shell and a rule set from the pavilion organiser, and the stand builder's job is the fit-out within it: the walls, counters, meeting rooms, product displays and graphics that make a shared structure read as one company. We build both, and the second one is a discipline of its own, because the pavilion's height limits, graphic zones and delivery windows are fixed before the exhibitor arrives.

Pavilion work we can show you

Start with the 450 m² national startup pavilion at London Tech Week, Olympia London: 55 companies on the DUM FLEX^™ frame with a shared stage, meeting rooms and a single graphic identity. At ExCeL we built the 75 m² Service Exporters' Association pavilion at WTM London, a multi-exhibitor stand where several member companies shared one bespoke structure. National-pavilion organisers and their appointed agents work with us on the same basis: one drawing set, one delivery, and every participant's space finished to the same standard.

Double-deck stands at ExCeL, and what the venue asks for

Double-deck structures are common on the DSEI floor: a meeting level above, a product level below. ExCeL treats them as complex structures, and the file that goes with one is prepared long before the build.

The complex-structure file

A two-storey stand at ExCeL carries scaled drawings, structural calculations, a risk assessment and method statement, and an independent engineer's confirmation. That file goes in through the organiser ahead of the tenancy, and the engineer's on-site certificate is issued before the doors open. Rigging above the stand is ordered through the venue's own rigging team. The venue rules themselves, and how we schedule around them, are on our ExCeL London page.

A double-deck we built on that floor

The 55 m² double-deck stand for Turkish Technic at MRO Europe, ExCeL London, put an upper meeting deck over an open product floor within a compact footprint, in bespoke joinery from our own workshop, with the structural file and the engineer's sign-off on the organiser's programme. An aviation maintenance show is a close neighbour of the defence and security world, and the same structure and the same ExCeL file apply to a DSEI plot; the dates come from the DSEI manual.

Exhibiting at DSEI: the questions we get asked