Three years of raise-days — what changed since 2023

In January 2023 we reset the workshop — new benches, the distributed-production model fully live, and a raise-day sheet that finally had teeth. Since then we have raised roughly 120 stands. This is the annual look-back: the data we keep, the misses we logged, and what changes in the machine this year. We publish it because clients keep asking the same fair question — “how do we know you'll hit the date?” — and a three-year record answers it better than a promise.

The record, plainly

• ~120 stands raised across 8 countries since January 2023 — from 6 m² corners to a 48 m² pavilion
• On-schedule sign-off: 92 %. Of the ten late stands, seven were signed within four hours of target, three ran to the following morning
• Zero structural incidents. The number that actually matters. Every suspended or above-head element carried a countersigned calc note
• Median brief-to-raise: 15 days against our published 14+2 — the median client signs mid-window
• 28 raise-day defects caught by photo audit, 26 fixed before opening; two negotiated with the client in daylight

What the misses had in common

We keep a plain-text log of every late or imperfect raise, and reading three years of it is humbling in a useful way. The pattern is not weather, not suppliers, not venues — it is stacking. Nine of the ten late stands shared a resource (a crane slot, a specialist, a vehicle) with another build on the same clock. The SARA 2025 notes tell one of those stories in full. The rule that came out of the log — no two stands above 30 m² share a lifting slot — has held since, and 2026's on-schedule rate is currently a clean sheet we are trying not to jinx.

What actually changed since 2023

The raise-day sheet grew teeth. In 2023 it was a checklist; now it is a contract artefact with three signatures — site lead, studio, client — and a 22-photo audit attached. Disputes about “what was agreed” have fallen to zero, not because clients argue less but because there is nothing left to argue about.

The benches converged. Year one of distributed production, the finish drift between our best and newest bench was visible to any professional eye. Three annual sample-board cycles and a few hundred audited raises later, the photo audits from Lagos and Ouagadougou are hard to tell apart — which was always the test.

The estimate got honest. We rebuilt the quick-price logic on the home page from three years of closed invoices, so the 10-second figure now lands within 12 % of the final quote in four cases out of five. An estimate that flatters you into a phone call is a marketing tool; one that survives contact with the invoice is a planning tool.

This year

2026's changes are already in motion: stock modules for the two most common agri-show elements, a second tool container standard for dense sites, and — the one we are most ambitious about — publishing these operational notes properly, in French as well as English, because half our market reads us in translation. The workshop's numbers stay on the wall, reviewed monthly, cut-off the 31st. If you want your stand to be one of them, file a brief; the record above is what the process looks like from the inside.