The crew is in Orlando, the tools are in the van, and the booth is on the floor in crates. Security will not let them in, because a certificate is missing a name. It is the most avoidable delay in exhibiting.
Two pieces of paper decide whether the people building your booth get through the door: the exhibitor appointed contractor form, and the certificate of insurance that goes with it. Neither costs much. Both have deadlines that fall weeks before move-in, long before anyone is thinking about install day.
Here is how they work, with real requirements from shows in Orlando and elsewhere, so you can recognize the pattern when your NPE2027 manual arrives.
What an EAC is, and what it cannot do
An exhibitor appointed contractor is any contractor working for you on the show floor who is not one of the show’s official contractors. IAAPA Expo, held at the Orange County Convention Center, defines it in almost exactly those words. Your exhibit house installing the booth it built is the ordinary case. So is an AV company or an independent install crew.
Approval does not open every job. The AAOS 2025 EAC rules, a Freeman show in San Diego, list work for which permission is not given at all:
- Electrical, plumbing, and all other utilities.
- Telephone and communications.
- Drayage and forklift operations.
- Rigging, overhead or lift.
- Catering and food service.
- Security.
That list is typical. Those jobs stay with the official contractors and appear on your budget as show services, ordered and billed separately. Our guide to EAC or general service contractor covers the split in more depth.
The EAC form
Every show runs its own EAC notification, usually an online form naming the contractor, the booth it is working on, and an on-site supervisor. Four details matter more than the rest.
- ✓It is per boothAAOS 2025 required an approval form for each booth an EAC worked on, with a fee of one hundred fifty dollars per booth location.
- ✓It is not done on siteThe same rules state that approvals will not be given on site.
- ✓It has a date, and sometimes a late feeIAAPA Expo 2026 set its EAC deadline at October 13, 2026, for an event that starts November 12. Fifty dollars extra after that date, one hundred after October 29.
- ✓It decides accessIAAPA’s wording leaves no room: no EAC will be allowed to work on the show floor without registering.
The certificate of insurance
A COI is a one-page summary from the contractor’s insurer showing the coverage it carries. Show management checks it against a list, and every line on the list is a way for it to be rejected. This is what IAAPA Expo 2026 asks of EACs at the OCCC:
- Workers compensation of one million dollars.
- General liability of one million dollars per occurrence and two million in the aggregate.
- Automobile liability of one million dollars.
- Additional insureds: IAAPA, the Orange County Convention Center, and GES, the show’s contractor, with their staff and agents.
- Coverage dates that begin on or before November 12 and run past November 23, 2026.
- IAAPA, at its Orlando address, as certificate holder.
AAOS 2025 asked for comparable liability limits, named the association, Freeman, and the San Diego Convention Center as additional insureds, required the certificate to show the complete show dates, and set February 5, 2025 as the deadline. Miss it, the rules said, and the EAC could not access the show floor.
Why certificates get bounced
Read those two lists side by side and the failure points are clear. In our experience they are the same at almost every show.
Dates that cover the show days but not move-in and move-out.
Dates that span the full period the show states, first install day to last dismantle day.
A generic certificate with no additional insureds.
Every party the show names, spelled the way the show spells them.
Limits copied from last year’s show.
Limits checked against this show’s list. They differ from show to show.
Emailed to whoever seemed right.
Submitted through the channel the show specifies, to the certificate holder it names.
Each fix is quick for an insurer on a normal week. Found in the week of move-in, the same fix is a day your crew cannot work.
Exhibitors need coverage too
The EAC is not the only party with a certificate to file. Many shows ask exhibitors for their own. NAMM calls exhibitor insurance mandatory, not optional, for its January 2027 show in Anaheim. It names the association, the Anaheim Convention Center, and the City of Anaheim as additional insureds, requires coverage from move-in through move-out, and set November 13, 2026 as the deadline for certificates.
If your company is exhibiting at NPE2027, check whether its manual asks the same of you, and hand the requirements to your own broker early.
What we know about NPE2027
Freeman is the official contractor for NPE2027. The EAC rules, the insurance requirements, and their deadlines sit in the Exhibitor Services Manual, which the Exhibitor Resource Center holds behind exhibitor login. We have not reproduced figures from it here. Use the examples above to know what to look for, then follow NPE’s own requirements to the letter.
A paperwork timeline that works
- ✓When the manual is publishedFind the EAC and insurance sections. Copy every requirement into one list: deadline, fee, limits, additional insureds, certificate holder, dates.
- ✓The same weekSend that list to your exhibit house and ask for a draft certificate from its insurer.
- ✓Two weeks laterCheck the draft line by line against the show’s list. Names, dates, limits.
- ✓Well before the deadlineFile the EAC form and the certificate through the show’s channel. Keep the confirmation.
- ✓Two weeks before move-inConfirm the on-site supervisor and how wristbands or badges are collected. At AAOS, those instructions went to the supervisor two weeks before the first install day.
Who files it
Settle this in writing. If your exhibit house is the EAC, it files its own form and supplies its own certificate. On an NPE2027 project we handle exhibitor kit ordering, EAC forms, and certificates of insurance alongside the build, so the paperwork moves with the schedule instead of waiting for someone to remember it.
The labor side of the same question, who may do what on an Orlando floor, is in Florida right-to-work and your booth labor.
The crew can be ready. The paper has to be ready first.