Exhibition centres are for trade fairs and industrial shows. Hundreds, if not thousands, of stands display the latest technologies, products and services, with trained business representatives on hand to explain their benefits. What enables these exhibition centres to function well is a great team of management that organises booking, advertising, catering and other aspects of customer services. An even more important role is played by those with electrical engineering jobs who help setting up the exhibitions and later breaking them down.

Take the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) at Birmingham as an example. Depending on the nature and significance of the exhibitions, each stand has its own unique electrical requirements. While some stands in a particular exhibition may require more power, others may need three-phase electric power systems, instead of single-phase ones. This is why electrical engineering jobs in exhibition centres are often complex and time-consuming.

Wisely, the NEC recently adopted a sophisticated control system that is quick to set up and strip down. The system enables a central control point to establish whether a stand should have a single- or three-phase power supply. More importantly, it is capable of restricting the current that can be drawn by a stand or group of stands sharing the same supply, while billing each and every supply. In short, the system enables those with electrical engineering jobs to have the power and capabilities to manage what the NEC expects.

Other exhibition centres in Europe are watching the NEC with great interests. As the largest exhibition centre in the UK and the seventh largest in Europe, those with electrical engineering jobs have succeeded in their task to set up electrical supplies for all present and future exhibitions held in the NEC?s 21 halls with a total area of 200,000 square metres. With the aforementioned control system, these professionals are able to limit and monitor the power consumption of each stand. Fixed wiring to thousands of fixed sockets throughout the halls also allows automated control over the entire exhibition centre. Finally, the system?s software provides stand booking and power configuration that is written as a database.