A house is not built by one team, it is built by twenty, each turning up for a day or a week and then handing the site to the next. The order they come in is not random. It runs bottom to top and wet to dry, and it is the reason your job sits quiet for a week while everyone waits on one certificate or one tradie. Once you know the sequence, a slow week stops feeling like a problem and starts making sense.
The pro watches the handover points, not the individual days. Frame cannot start until the slab has cured. Plaster cannot start until the frame is inspected and the rough-in is signed off. Every delay that matters happens at one of these handovers, where one trade is waiting on another to finish and be checked.
A standard new home runs in a set order, and each stage lines up with a progress payment because it is a genuine milestone. It starts in the ground and ends with a clean. The days below are rough and a busy block or bad weather stretches them, but the sequence almost never changes.
The thing to notice is how much of it is one trade at a time. The slab crew leaves before the frame crew arrives. The bricklayers work the outside while, later, the roof goes on above them. It only turns into a crowd near the end, at fixing and finishing, when the site is dry and locked and several trades can share it.
What stage is my build at, and what has to be finished and inspected before the next trade starts?
This is the handover that confuses people the most, so it is worth its own paragraph. Once the frame is up and the roof is on, the house is an open timber skeleton with every wall cavity exposed. That is the only time the electrician and plumber can run their cables and pipes through the studs, drill through the frame, and place every power point, switch, light and tap where the plan says. This is the rough-in, and while it is happening the walls are still open.
The plasterer's whole job is to close those walls up with sheets. If the plasterer went first, the sparky and the plumber would have to smash the new walls open to run their services, then the plasterer would have to come back and patch it all. So the order is fixed: frame, then rough-in, then the walls get inspected while they are still open, and only then does the plasterer line them. The plasterer is not being slow. The plasterer is waiting for the wall to be full before sealing it, because you only get to see inside it once.
Has the electrical and plumbing rough-in been inspected before plaster is booked?
Two simple rules explain most of the order. First, wet to dry. Anything that involves water or mud, the excavation, the slab, the brickwork mortar, the wet plaster, the tile glue and grout, the waterproofing, happens before the trades that hate moisture, the painter and the flooring layer and the cabinetmaker. You do not lay a timber floor and then pour a slab next to it.
Second, bottom to top and rough before finish. Structure before services, services before linings, linings before finishes. Every trade builds on the one below and then gets covered by the one above, which is why a mistake found late is expensive: fixing it means peeling back everything that went on top. It is also why the pros photograph each stage the day before it disappears.
A renovation follows the same logic, it just starts with taking things apart and it interleaves with a house you may still be living in. The front end is demolition and making safe, then any structural work, then it rejoins the new-build sequence: services rough-in, plaster, fix-out, fit-off, finish. The difference is the joins. A renovation has to marry new work to old floors, old walls and old plumbing that is rarely where the drawings guess, so the surprises show up at the point where new meets existing.
The other difference is sequencing around living in it. A good builder stages a reno so the kitchen or the only bathroom is not out of action longer than it has to be, and that sometimes means a trade comes back twice rather than doing it all in one visit. That is a deliberate choice for your comfort, not a sign the job is drifting.
Where does new work meet the existing house, and what happens if the old plumbing or framing is not where we expect?
Most of the waiting on a build is not a lazy site, it is a handover. Concrete has to cure before the frame goes on. Inspections have to be booked and passed before the next trade can legally start, and inspectors run to their own diary. Trades are shared across many jobs and slot you in when the previous stage is ready. Materials, especially bricks, windows, cabinets and tiles, are ordered weeks ahead and a late delivery stalls everything behind it. Rain stops the slab and the roof.
When your job goes quiet, the useful question is never "why is nobody here", it is "what is the next stage waiting on". Nine times out of ten it is a cure, an inspection, a delivery or a trade finishing the job before yours, and knowing which one tells you whether to relax or to make a call.
What is the next stage waiting on right now: a cure, an inspection, a delivery, or a trade?
The pages on BuildPilot this guide leans on.
Site cut and set-out, then the slab, then the frame, then roof and lock-up, then the plumbing and electrical rough-in, then insulation and plaster, then fix-out (doors, tiling, cabinets), then fit-off and finishing (tapware, switches, paint) and a final clean. It runs bottom to top and wet to dry.
Because the electrician and plumber run their cables and pipes through the open wall frame at rough-in, and the plasterer's job is to seal those walls up with sheets. Plaster first would mean smashing the new walls open for the services and then patching them, so the order is frame, rough-in, inspection, then plaster.
Almost always a handover: concrete curing, an inspection waiting to be booked and passed, a material delivery in transit, or a trade finishing another job before yours. A quiet week is usually the sequence working, not the site being idle.
Largely yes, with demolition and any structural work on the front. After that it rejoins the new-build sequence: rough-in, plaster, fix-out, fit-off, finish. The extra complication is joining new work to existing floors, walls and plumbing, which is where renovation surprises appear.
Fix-out is when the carpentry and finishes go in: internal doors, skirting, architraves, the kitchen and other cabinets, and tiling with waterproofing first. Fit-off is the final connection of everything: tapware, toilets, power points, switches and light fittings, followed by paint and a clean.
Sizes quoted are typical for Australian residential work and are given to help you read drawings and ask better questions. They are not a specification. Your engineer, designer, builder and the National Construction Code decide what applies to your house.
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