What to order first: long lead time items in a renovation

Order anything made to measure, imported, or manufactured to order before demolition begins. On most renovations that means windows and external doors, cabinetry, stone benchtops, tapware, sanitaryware, tiles, appliances, structural steel and shower screens. What decides the order is not the cost of the item — it is whether the job stops without it.

Every renovation has a critical path, and on most jobs it runs through the supply chain rather than through the trades. A carpenter can be rebooked. A window that has not been made cannot be hurried.

The mistake is almost never a lack of urgency. It is a reasonable-sounding assumption that an item needs to be ordered in time for its installation date — when in fact a surprising number of items are needed by a trade weeks or months earlier, for their dimensions rather than their physical presence.

Why lead time drives the order, not price

It is natural to sequence purchasing by cost, dealing with the big-ticket items first and the small ones later. It is also the wrong sort of ordering for a construction program.

A set of tapware is a small line on the budget. It is also the item a plumber needs before rough-in, because rough-in positions are set against the specific product, not against a generic idea of a tap. If it has not been chosen, the plumber cannot proceed — and everything behind the plumber waits.

Sort your purchasing list by the date the item is needed by a trade. That date is often much earlier than the date it goes in.

The items that most often hold jobs up

• Windows and external doors. Almost always made to order, and they gate lock-up — which in turn gates every internal trade.
• Structural steel. Fabricated to the engineer's details, so it cannot be ordered until the engineering is complete.
• Cabinetry. Manufactured after a site measure, which cannot happen until walls are lined and square.
• Stone and engineered benchtops. Templated after cabinetry is installed — a second sequential measure-and-make step that cannot be run in parallel with the first.
• Appliances. Needed at cabinetry design stage, because carcasses are built around actual dimensions rather than nominal ones.
• Tapware and sanitaryware. Needed at rough-in, long before fit-off.
• Tiles. Dye lots vary between batches, so the full quantity plus wastage should come from one order. Ranges are also discontinued more often than people expect.
• Shower screens. Measured only after tiling, so they land at the very end no matter how early you decide.
• Specialty items. Skylights, custom hardware, heritage mouldings, imported fittings and anything with a single supplier in the country.

What a lead time actually means

The single most useful habit in renovation purchasing is to treat a quoted lead time as an incomplete answer and ask what starts the clock.

Lead times are commonly quoted from the point of order — but the point of order may be defined as receipt of deposit, or approval of shop drawings, or confirmation of a site measure. The difference between those is often weeks, and it is invisible unless you ask.

Five questions worth asking every supplier, in writing:

1. Is this a stock item or made to order?
2. What starts the lead time — order, deposit, or approved drawings?
3. Does the quoted time include delivery to site, or is it ex-warehouse?
4. What happens if the item is unavailable when you go to fulfil? Confirm whether substitution is at their discretion or yours.
5. How long will you hold the item if the site is not ready?

Keep the answers. A written lead time with a defined start date is a genuinely useful planning document; a verbal estimate is not.

Ordering against the trade sequence

The reason lead times are so often misjudged is that people plan backwards from installation, when they should be planning backwards from the trade who needs the information.

Three examples make the pattern clear. Tapware is installed at fit-off, near the end — but the plumber needs the specific product at rough-in, near the beginning. Appliances arrive late — but the cabinetmaker needs the model numbers before manufacture. Tiles are laid mid-sequence — but tile thickness affects finished floor levels and door clearances, so the selection matters before screeding.

Work through the trade sequence and, for each stage, ask which selections that trade needs locked. The answer produces your ordering deadlines. For the full sequence, see what order trades come in on a renovation.

A practical ordering process

1. List every item that is made to order, imported, or supplied by one distributor. Anything you could buy off a shelf today is not on this list.
2. Get a written lead time for each, with the clock-start defined.
3. Map each item to the trade stage that needs it — not the stage it is installed in.
4. Work backwards to an order-by date for every item, and add contingency for the ones with a single supplier.
5. Order the critical path items before demolition starts. Windows, external doors, steel and anything gating lock-up.
6. Agree storage and delivery. Who receives it, where it is stored, and who carries the risk while it sits there.
7. Inspect on delivery, not on installation day. A damaged item discovered on arrival is a replacement inside the program. Discovered on installation day, it is a delay.
8. Keep one register. Item, supplier, order date, lead time, expected delivery, actual delivery. One page, visible to everyone, updated weekly.

Common questions

When should I start ordering?

As soon as the design is fixed and, where relevant, the engineering is complete. In practice that means before demolition rather than during it. Selections made during construction are the most common source of avoidable delay.

What if I genuinely cannot decide on something yet?

Separate the decisions that gate a trade from the ones that do not. Wall colour can wait. Tapware cannot. If a decision is holding up rough-in, make the best available choice and move — the cost of a compromise is almost always smaller than the cost of the delay.

Should I pay for storage rather than delay an order?

Often, yes. Storage is a known and modest cost. A stalled program is neither. The consideration is condition rather than money — timber, cabinetry and stone all need appropriate conditions, and responsibility for damage while stored should be agreed in writing.

Who orders — me or the builder?

Both arrangements work, and what matters is that it is unambiguous. Every item should have one named person responsible for ordering it. Items assumed to be someone else's responsibility are the ones that are never ordered at all.

What happens if something arrives wrong?

Raise it immediately and in writing, with photographs, before it is installed. Most suppliers resolve genuine supply errors without argument, and the resolution is far simpler while the item is still in its packaging.

Where to go next

Supply is one of the main reasons a program slips, but it is not the only one.

Read next: why renovations run late — the repeatable causes and what you can actually control. Or start at Renovations & Extensions for the wider picture.

Home Collab publishes the working detail behind building and renovating in Australia — written from job experience, updated as methods and regulations move, and free to read.