The APF Exhibition is the UK’s largest forestry, woodland, arboriculture, firewood, fencing, trees and timber show. As organisation continues for APF 2024, its exhibition secretary offers Forestry Journal readers an exclusive insight into how preparations are coming along.

THE clock is ticking and the pace is inevitably picking up as we get closer to September. Our exhibitor site meeting in April was a great success with more sites sold. Bookings continue to come in daily. Our 1,900 m demo circuit is now over 90-per-cent booked.

Demand for sites in our Fencing Village has been huge so we have had to expand this area to accommodate bookings. The Fencing Village has really grown in stature and size at recent demos and it will be a fantastic showcase for the fencing industry. All the major players have now booked space so if you want to see what’s new in the fencing world, both equipment and materials, APF 2024 will be the place to see them in action, and you will be able to watch the best fencers in the UK compete for the British titles in both quick fencing and traditional post and wire.

A meeting in June meeting saw us run our first ‘Table Top’ exercise. Greg Cole, our safety officer, is putting the final touches to our Event Management Plan (EMP).

Fencing will once again take centre stage Fencing will once again take centre stage (Image: FJ/Jack Haugh)

This document is a requirement for all large shows and basically describes how we operate, the show layout and facilities, our chain of command, our traffic plan and how we will deal with any emergencies should they occur. This is wide ranging and covers everything from a lost child to a bomb alert. It is a very comprehensive document as you might imagine. However, as one army commander once said: “Plans only last as long as the first contact” (i.e. plans are great right up to a point but then circumstances change and don’t always fit nicely into your plan). 

So to test our EMP and us, we are running our Table Top exercise. We have invited an experienced event organiser to join us for the afternoon. We will all sit around the table and he will throw a series of scenarios at us, which we have had no prior warning of. As a team we will then have to discuss how we will deal with them and see if there are holes in our EMP. Scenarios might be as mundane but nontheless serious as the toilets failing, running out of fresh water or a case of food poisoning. It might include things out of our immediate control like a major road near our site being closed due to an accident and how we direct traffic elsewhere.

It will be a good test of our teamwork and should give us confidence in our EMP.

This exercise will be followed shortly after in early July by a Safety Advisory Group (SAG) meeting. This is a safety-orientated meeting run by the local council and attendance is a requirement for all large events like ours. It is attended by a wide range of organisations who might be affected or involved in the demo. This includes fire, police and ambulance services, Highways Agency, County Council, local council, Environmental Health as well as our own first-aid and security contractors. They will run through our EMP with us and raise any concerns they might have and ask how we will deal with them. It is a useful exercise to have fresh eyes look at our plans to pick up something we might have missed. We are all working together to try and ensure the event goes as smoothly as possible.

There is plenty to see at APF There is plenty to see at APF (Image: FJ/stock)

I think many people will be surprised at what goes on behind the scenes and the hoops you have to jump through to stage a large event. There is a huge amount of detail to consider and rules to comply with, like how many toilets you need per 1,000 people on site. Setting up, large events are effectively classed as construction sites during the build, so contractors and our staff need an induction on site rules and safety before being allowed on site. Alcohol licences need to be applied for. This is the world in which we now live and we will meet every requirement, but this does take time and money. Please bear this mind when you think about where your ticket money goes to! I do fondly look back to ‘the old days’ when we just turned up the weekend before the show, put on a great event then went home on the Sunday afternoon after!

Advance tickets and camping sales are going very well. Book yours now to take advantage of discounts. If you want to enter the poleclimbing, tree-climbing, fencing or forwarder-driving competitions, visit the ‘Competitions & Events’ page of our website for full details.

See you next month.