How to plan, track, and deliver an exhibition AV installation when the opening date is fixed months in advance and there is no slack in the schedule. The risks that cause installations to run over, and the practices that keep them on track.
exhibition AV deadline managementAn exhibition opening date is typically set a year or more in advance. Press previews are booked. Funders are committed. The institution's public programme is built around it. A technical production delay that pushes the opening does not just inconvenience the production team. It creates reputational and financial consequences that the institution carries long after the AV company has been paid and gone home.
A production company that understands this context plans differently to one that does not. Every decision that creates schedule risk is either resolved early or escalated immediately. The project timeline works backwards from the opening date, not forwards from when work begins.
Every week that passes without resolving an open question adds cost to resolving it later. In exhibition production, the outstanding questions are never smaller at install than they were at brief stage. They are only more expensive.
If the artist or post-production company delivers final content at the start of the install window, there is no time to identify and resolve playback issues before the opening. Content delivery must be a milestone in the production schedule with a date that allows testing and iteration before install begins.
Other activities in the venue, building work, or a preceding exhibition running over can reduce the available install window. A production company that has only planned for the original access window has no contingency. A second, compressed programme needs to exist and be agreed with all parties before install begins.
Projector positions, speaker placement, cable routes. Every technical decision that is not confirmed before install day is a decision that has to be made under pressure, in the space, with crew standing by. These decisions are always worse and always more expensive under those conditions than they would have been two weeks earlier.
Niche or specialist equipment for exhibition work sometimes has long lead times or limited hire availability. Specifying equipment and confirming availability at brief stage, not at the time of booking, eliminates a category of risk that is entirely avoidable.
Once the install window begins, the clock to opening is running. The priorities are: infrastructure first (power, rigging, cable routes), then hardware (panels, projectors, speakers, media servers), then integration and testing, then calibration with content, then artist or curator review, then sign-off.