How do you set up events and meeting rooms without hurting someone?
By planning the set-up as part of the event rather than as something one person does in the last twenty minutes. Trestle tables, stacked chairs, lecterns and AV road cases are heavy, long or awkward, and they are moved in bursts by staff whose usual job is at a desk. The controls that prevent injury are decided in the event plan: how many people, how much time, whether the chair dolly and table trolley are on the floor, whether the goods lift is booked, and where the hire company or courier will actually put the gear down. Technique matters less than any of those.
Last reviewed September 2026 · Applies to the Manual Handling Training for Office and General Workplace Staff course.
What makes event set-up a hazardous manual task
Look at the loads. A folding trestle table weighs about 15 to 25 kilograms and is long enough that one person carrying it through a doorway is a collision waiting to happen. Stacking chairs are 5 to 8 kilograms each, which is trivial individually and a serious trolley job in a stack of ten. AV road cases are built to protect equipment, not to be carried, and projectors, lecterns and staging sections are dense and awkward. None of these figures is a legal limit, because Australian WHS law does not set one; they are the numbers you need in order to plan.
Now look at the pattern. Event set-up is infrequent, so there is no habit and often no procedure. It is done under time pressure, because the room is booked and the guests are arriving. It is often done alone, because the person who agreed to "sort the room" did not think of it as manual handling. And it happens in spaces with cables, doorways, fire stairs and carpet that makes trolleys hard to push. High force, awkward posture, repetition and a poor environment are all present at once, which is the definition of a hazardous manual task under the Code of Practice.
Plan the people, the time and the equipment
The single most effective control is a line in the event plan that allocates set-up and pack-down time and names how many people will do it. Two people to open and place each trestle table. A chair dolly for stacked chairs and a table trolley for tables, both on the same floor as the room, not locked in a facilities store two levels down. The goods lift booked for the delivery window and for pack-down, so nothing goes through fire stairs.
Consult the people who have done it before. They know the door that will not stay open, the threshold that catches trolley wheels, the room where the tables are stored on their sides behind the piano. That knowledge is exactly what the employer's consultation duty is meant to capture, and it turns a forty-minute solo struggle into a fifteen-minute job for three people with the right equipment.
- Set-up and pack-down time and headcount written into the event plan
- Chair dolly and table trolley on the floor before the gear arrives
- Goods lift booked; nothing carried through fire stairs
- Walkways and exits kept clear during set-up so nobody steps over cables and stacks
Plan the delivery so the lift never happens
Eliminating a manual task sits at the top of the hierarchy of controls, and in event work it is often available. Ask the hire company to deliver and collect from the room, or from the closest point with lift access, rather than from the loading dock or reception. Ask whether they set up as part of the service; many do, for a modest charge that is cheaper than an afternoon of staff time and far cheaper than an injury. Have catering delivered on trolleys to the room and collected the same way.
For AV, roll the road cases rather than carrying them; the wheels are there for that reason. Lift a case onto a stage or table only with two people and only with the case open so it is lighter. Cable management is part of the plan too: cables taped or covered before the room fills, not after someone has tripped carrying a stack of chairs.
Team lifts, and knowing when to stop
Some lifts remain: a table onto a trolley, a lectern onto a stage, a case onto a table. For a two-person lift, agree who is leading, agree the route and where the load will be set down, lift on a count, and move at the pace of the slower person. Long items go through doorways end-first with a person at each end, not sideways with one person guessing. If the load is heavier or more awkward than expected once it is off the ground, put it down and rethink rather than pressing on.
The decision not to lift is a legitimate one. If you are alone and the task needs two people, if the trolley is missing, or if the lift is out and the only route is the stairs, the answer is that the task waits, or someone with authority is told that the room will not be ready on time. Raising that is part of the safety system, not a failure to be helpful.
Module 6, Workstations, Storage and the Occasional Heavy Lift, covers meeting rooms and events specifically, with the common loads and the planning steps above. Module 7, Equipment, Aids and Tools for Offices and General Workplaces, covers chair dollies, table trolleys, sack trucks and platform steps, and how to check them before use. Module 5, Safe Movement Principles, covers pushing and pulling, team lifts and the decision not to lift. Allocating the people, buying the dollies and booking the lift are your employer's controls; the course is the shared understanding that makes those controls get used.
Common questions
Sources
- Safe Work Australia — Model Code of Practice: Hazardous manual tasks — The national code the state and territory regulators adopt or mirror.
- Safe Work Australia — Lifting, pushing and pulling (manual tasks)
General information about Australian work health and safety duties, not legal advice. Your employer’s procedures and the regulator in your state take precedence.
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