Job Description

Event Construction Laborer

Have you ever been to a wedding, fourth of July barbeque, or the county fair? If so, there's a good chance you’ve used one of the massive tents or stages that seem to appear and disappear overnight. People with jobs as event construction laborers were likely responsible for this.

As an event construction laborer, I worked both as a customer service representative and as the actual laborer. First, I worked with customers planning their vision of an event. Then, I worked with my friends and coworkers to go through the process of setting up the project for the day. This could range from a couple of small tents and a cotton candy machine to massive multi-day long projects.

Although on the surface it seems like a simple enough job, there are always a lot of moving pieces in this type of work, and a lot of things can go wrong. Additionally, I had this job at the same time as two of my best friends from high school. Everyone else that had worked at the company quit in our first week due to poor management. This combination meant we had little leadership and a lot of job security which created the perfect storm for less than perfect work.

There were four main phases of a project all of differing lengths and importance:

- Loading and travel

- Planning

- Construction

- Take-Down

A given day would usually start with us reviewing the orders that had we would complete for the and divvying up the work between us. One person could often complete at least a few of the orders themselves (for example I delivered 400 sets of chinaware to an old woman an hour away). Other projects might need ten workers or more to combine efforts.

Loading and Travel

Once we had divided the orders, my potential partner and I would begin the first phase of loading the truck. This part of the project was essential as forgetting anything meant putting the construction on hold as we went back to the shop. Some orders were so large that it meant we would have to play a Tetris-like game as we packed the box truck full of hundreds of pieces of rented equipment.

Every job had a different composition of items that we would need to load. There was also rarely enough time to double-check what we had loaded before departing. The large scope of projects meant there was a consistent chance that we may have overlooked an item. On one job, I had to make six trips to and from the store 

Once the truck was full, the next step was to travel to the location and begin planning the construction. Some things you might want to consider before planning your day are:

- A project's potential time to complete

- Its distance and position relative to other projects

- The weather or other external factors that might impede construction

Sites could often be upwards of thirty minutes away, taking a major chunk of time out of a nine-hour workday.

Planning

Depending on the complexity of the project, one of us may go and talk with the customer to plan out their vision. This oftentimes required a good bit of customer service skills. Sometimes a client's desires might be unreasonable or impossible to complete. Keeping a level head at these times was always essential and rarely did things get out of hand. A customer might get mad if they had rented a tent too large for their backyard. A quick run back to the shop could solve most of these problems.

For large-scale events, the customer might need to draw up a blueprint of what they want and help us map out the space. Many different tents might all have different purposes. This meant it was essential to ensure they were in the place the client wanted them. Making a mistake at this step could mean having to completely restart the construction phase which could cost hours.

Construction

The third and longest step was the actual construction of the project or the transportation of materials. Depending on the size and type of tent the length of time and effort varied. The easiest projects might need no construction at all. One person could often complete the simplest parts of projects that only required following simple steps. Other projects required a team effort as we lifted heavy aluminum bars to construct huge tent frames. Even the most complicated tents were not too challenging. The process was more like putting together a large piece of Ikea furniture than traditional construction. This was due to the need to take apart the constructions and put them together often.

Despite the simplicity, it was important to take this part of the job seriously. If one of these tents were to have collapsed, it would be a disaster with severe consequences. Nonetheless, the risk of danger to ourselves was much less considered. Some of the dangers we faced on the job included:

- Flying metal stakes

- Falling aluminum beams

- Free rolling one-hundred-pound stacks of chairs

Take-down

Once we had completed a job and it was up to par with the needs of the client, we would pack up any extra equipment and move on to the next job. At the end of the day, once our truck was empty, the final steps would be to go to any previous job sites that had reached the end of their rental period. There, we would load the truck back up with the projects from previous days and bring it back to the shop. At the shop, we would take time to account for materials and report on completed jobs. We usually couldn't complete all the jobs of a day due to unforeseen circumstances, so we would put the jobs with the soonest upcoming need at the top of the pile for the next day.