March is always a busy time for us. Not only is it a lot of companies end of year (so we seem to get inundated with last minute orders!) but it’s also our busiest month when it comes to trade shows, and it begins with the biggest one we do, Ecobuild.

Ecobuild, held at Londons EXCEL arena, is the leading exhibition and conference for construction, design and energy in the built environment, attracting over 33,000 high calibre, senior level decision makers and influencers from architects and developers, to local government and major infrastructure clients (their words not mine).

As for all of the exhibitions that we do the logistics of getting us there always prove to entertaining and there’s always something that either gets forgotten or lost as we transport 7 or 8 models and displays from our warehouse down to the capital. This year we’d even left it late to book a hotel for us to stay in! Fortunately we were still able to get into the hotel we’ve stayed at over the last couple of years.

So on the Monday before the show I’m up at the crack of dawn and drive up to the office from where I live down in Lancashire. By mid morning we’ve picked the van up and after some fun and games getting the displays into the van we are set and ready to go just before noon. Each year we select one of our systems that we want to have as the focal point for the show. This year we decided that our Op-Deck system was to be the one that we’d focus on. So in the run up to the show we had a cracking new model made on a much bigger display box than we have had in the past. Sounds good I hear you say! Yes, but as this system is topped off with a nice section of concrete we’d completely forgotten (and by that I mean hadn’t even considered) how heavy this thing was going to be! Watching 3 (oldish) blokes trying to pick this thing up and put it into the back of a transit van was a thing of comedy gold.

 Our new Op-Deck model in place (eventually).

Anyway, following a quick bite to eat we were off heading south on the A1 on our 250 plus mile journey to the Docklands. Fortunately for me Chris decided he was driving as I’d done a 2 hour drive already that morning.

As far as journeys go it was pretty uneventful and we were down and ready to unload for around 5.30pm (this included our traditional taking the wrong lane on the last roundabout before getting to EXCEL).

Now for the fun part, how the hell do we get the Op-Deck model out of the van when we are a man down?? After a bit of quick thinking from me I managed to persuade a forktruck driver to give us 30 seconds of his time and lift said (heavy) display down for us, in the process saving us a good half hour of messing around and potentially dropping the thing and destroying it.

So with that taken care of we were all done and dusted and ready for the start of the show by 7pm. So after dumping the van at the EXCEL we were off on the tube across to Greenwich to our hotel.