everything arrived in one drop. print for the hospitality areas, the outdoor site and the client's own rooms, all on the same lorry, with nothing split by location. the supplier had sent too few installers to put it up. each of those was a choice the supplier made to keep the price down. one delivery costs less than several. packing by location takes time in the factory. a crew is a big line on any quote. the agency's production team saw it coming and said so, more than once. the plan didn't move. by the time it showed, the agency was too far in to change supplier. it had signed off the artwork, booked the print and fixed the dates, and swapping at that stage would have cost more than the problem. so the agency's own people spent build week doing the supplier's job. they unpacked it, sorted it area by area and carried it to where it was needed. then they picked up the tools and installed alongside the supplier's crew, because there weren't enough of them. none of that was careless. choosing an event print supplier for a big live event is a hard call. the quotes read alike, the deadline is close and nobody can ignore the lowest number. what a quote won't tell you is what the supplier does when somebody asks for the job to be done properly, and on a big job you usually find out after the order has gone in. the next time round, the same agency brought in one of our folc. before anyone had signed anything. a similar job in a different city. the site visit came first: lower ceilings and barer rooms than before, and better access at the door. then the suppliers. local this time, with their main production within an hour of the venue, so most of the print came from close by. each one heard, up front, what had gone wrong last time: the single drop, nothing packed by location, a crew too small for the build. then one of our folc., a senior print production person who has carried an install, asked each of them the same plain questions before they priced anything. where would they print it, and how far was that from the venue? how much would they print locally, and how much would they ship in? how many installers did the schedule need, day by day? would they pack and label every delivery by location? how would they move stock round that particular building? the method was dull. our folc. asked plain questions while the answers could still change who got the job. folc. law 010: a supplier who won't listen at the start won't listen in build week.