This guidance is focused on managing health & safety, and other operational issues at exhibitions taking place in UK event venues.  That said, since these are guiding principles, the content will have useful relevance to other types of event, such as conferences.

The idea was to produce a set of guidelines that would be equally applicable in all participating AEV member venues.

Ultimately, this guidance is intended to benefit the key customers of our industry, namely the clients/exhibitors who engage with events, and the visitors who attend them.  This will be achieved by improving communication between the key stakeholders; the member companies of AEO, AEV and ESSA, who make the shows happen!

By coming together, and proactively seeking to identify where working conditions/regulations are common (or, due to unique site circumstance, different), contributing venues are, in essence, providing the answers to questions supplier companies may have before (a) they are asked and (b) they turn up onsite!  The net result: more efficient onsite activity, a smoother operation for the event organiser, and, therefore, a more polished product for the client/exhibitor and visitor.

By unifying standards, we believe that it will make life easier to operate in AEV member venues and avoid confusion, particularly with suppliers and exhibitors who move from venue to venue.  Where (out of necessity) a participating venue maintains a different standard, this is specifically annotated.  That said, we have tried to keep such instances to a minimum.  We hope that, in time, more venues from within the AEV will sign up to these standards so that they will have even wider utility.

For venues that need to revise and review their health & safety, and other operational regulations, this unique online member resource will save hours of painstaking and detailed work.  Notwithstanding a few points of detail, which can be separately annotated, any UK member venue, who hosts any degree of exhibition business activity, should be able to adopt these guidelines wholesale.

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