Archive of E-Zine Articles

Straight time vs Overtime Costs: Planning to Avoid Overtime

Volume 2, Article 5, March 15, 2006

Since we have been covering a number of issues that directly affect your costs in the field, while completing the installation and dismantle process (I&D) for your trade show exhibit, we would like to present a discussion of another item that is commonly overlooked. This is the issue of scheduling work during overtime vs straight time and planning then scheduling to avoid overtime or limit your exposure to overtime charges.

Why is it important to schedule and plan for overtime?

Planning to avoid overtime, or on holidays and in some cities double time, is important in order for you to greatly reduce your trade show exhibit set-up costs. The cost of trade show services during straight-time are certainly not inexpensive, and on average these costs increase between 50% and 78% during periods of overtime or the dreaded, 100% during double time. Some cities do not even have overtime rates. The costs just increase directly to double time as soon as you are outside the specified straight time hours

Note: Machinery such as forklifts and condor lifts will not be charged at an overtime rate. If you are being charged at a higher rate for these machines during overtime hours it is because the staff required to run this machinery is included in the hourly cost of the lift.

During the installation and dismantle period you will rarely be able to avoid all of the overtime charges. However, there is planning that you can do to minimize your use of overtime hours and greatly reduce I&D costs.

Here are some tips for reducing your exposure to overtime and double-time:

Understand the major steps that are required for setting up your exhibit and create a list of tasks or milestones applicable to the booth set-up.

Understand which of these major tasks are interchangeable or can be completed out of order without lengthening or making the rest of set-up impossible.

Schedule in such a way that tasks that require the most expensive labor are done during straight time.

If necessary have small tasks that will slow down the rest of the installation team completed during overtime to increase your full crew efficiency during straight time hours.

Schedule in such a way that you have the greatest number of workers completing tasks during straight time, without changing the order of major milestones such that installation or dismantle completion is impossible.

Do not count on your exhibit house or other contractor in charge of exhibit installation to schedule in such a way that your costs will be minimized. No one will conserve your dollars like you.

Observation from the field: Recently while at a major medical show we walked around and observed 80 exhibits between 20' x 20' and 80' x 240' installed. We found that although there were 5 days to set the exhibits, and the first 3 of those days were straight time days, 40% of the exhibits were not even begun on straight time. The real crime of the matter is that in every case the freight required for exhibit set-up was there in the hall on the earliest possible date during the straight time days. The projects were simply not begun.

Expert Tip: In a situation where both straight time and overtime are available for the install, do the planning yourself and even oversee the work in order to reduce your costs the first time. Then, once you have a benchmark set for the cost of the install, make sure that your exhibit house or contractor completes the installation in such a way that you incur those same costs.

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