Exhibition & Convention Centers — Wide-Span Steel Halls for Trade & Ideas

The show floor is a heavy warehouse floor, not a ballroom floor. Exhibition halls must accept the industry's heaviest exhibits: construction machinery at 10-50 tonnes per machine, trucks and cranes driving into the hall through 6-8 m wide doors, and concentrated exhibit loads of 100-300 kN/m² at individual machine footprints. The floor slab is 300-400 mm thick C30/C35 concrete with heavy mesh reinforcement, designed as a slab-on-grade for concentrated wheel loads with 50-100 kN/m² uniform capacity, and structurally tied to the hall's primary frame where the hall is multi-level. Column grids of 12-18 m in secondary direction and 24-36 m in the primary direction are standard — the grid is set by the exhibition stand module (typically 3 m or 4 m grid, with 6 m and 9 m aisles).

The services grid is designed like a data centre riser. A modern hall consumes 200-500 W/m² of electrical demand, 60-100 m³/h/m² of ventilation, and 1-3 MW of HVAC peak cooling. The roof structure carries the heavy services: 200-600 mm diameter AHU ducts at 6-12 m centres, 400-800 L/s fresh air intakes, central vacuum, compressed air at 8 bar, water and drainage loops in floor trenches at 6-12 m centres. The roof steel is detailed with a 0.5-1.0 kN/m² service allowance above the dead load, and the structural grid is coordinated with the services grid so the ducting and lighting never fight the trusses.

Temporary events rig from the hall structure. Gala dinners hang stages, lighting grids and sound systems from the roof. The design provides 20-50 rigging points per bay at 5-10 kN capacity each on a 6-12 m grid, with the roof member schedule checked for these point loads. The vibration limit for a 5,000-people gala with live music is 5 mm amplitude at the truss node — the same limit that protects broadcast cameras in a stadium.

Fire, smoke and egress dominate the plan. A 20,000 m² hall with 8,000 occupants in dinner mode is a single-storey building with the fire risk of a high-rise: smoke extraction at 3-6 m³/s per 1,000 m², sprinkler densities of 10-20 L/min/m² in the exhibit zones, and fire-rated separation of the hall, lobbies, servicing corridors and the plant rooms. The roof structure's fire resistance is engineered with intumescent coating to achieve 60-90 minutes per GB 50016, with the evacuation model (escape time under 5 minutes) driving the exit door count and width.

The exhibition hall is, in engineering terms, the intersection of a warehouse, a convention theatre, a broadcast studio and a power plant — and it must look effortless. The steel frame makes that possible: long spans purchased once at fabrication, flexibility purchased at the connection details, and the ability to change your entire business in 72 hours purchased by designing the structure for the heaviest format the operator can sell.

Permanent Steel Structure's exhibition and cultural venue work includes the Fuzhou Strait Exhibition Center — a wide-span space frame complex whose column-free halls host international trade fairs — and the Jiaozuo Tai Chi Culture Exchange Center, a spatial grid structure combining exhibition, performance and cultural functions. Alongside these, our spatial grid systems have framed the Hangzhou Kaiyuan Senbo Hotel atrium and the National Maritime Museum of the South China Sea, demonstrating the same design-and-fabrication team's range across exhibition-adjacent public buildings.

The Fuzhou and Jiaozuo projects are the reference points when a client asks for an exhibition center: they prove our truss and space-frame halls achieve the column-free spans the exhibition industry prices, that the floor and services budgets are engineered before the hall is priced, and that the QA and erection discipline (EN 1090-2 EXC3, ±20 mm closure, 100% bolted field joints) is identical to our stadium and airport work. If your brief is a 20,000 m² hall for heavy machinery shows, we will hand you a scheme whose steel budget, floor schedule and services riser plan match the sales pitch your own client will hear from the operator.