Most delays and cost overruns on a build do not come from a single dramatic mistake. They come from stages happening out of order, or from one stage starting before the previous one has actually been resolved. Understanding the real stages of building a home, even in outline, is one of the most useful things a client can do before a project starts — because it explains why a studio might tell you “not yet” to a request that seems perfectly reasonable on its own.
At High Park, we are not only the architects. We coordinate the engineering consultants, manage construction as consultants on site, and deliver the interiors and furniture as part of one continuous project, rather than handing a finished shell over to someone else to furnish. That end-to-end responsibility is why we think about a build as five distinct stages. Skipping or compressing any one of them is where a project usually starts to go wrong.
Stage one: design development and coordinating every engineering input
Every project starts with the architect developing the design in consultation with the client — refining the layout, the massing, and the overall intent until it genuinely reflects what the client actually wants to live in or use. That much is familiar to most people.
What happens next is less visible, but it is where a huge amount of a project’s eventual success or failure is actually decided. After the preliminary design is settled, the engineering consultants come in: structural, mechanical, electrical, HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), the interior designer, and the landscape designer. Each of them produces detailed drawings for their own discipline, based on the architect’s design.
The architect’s job at this point is to coordinate all of those drawings into a single, practical set of construction documents — the actual drawings a contractor can build from without guessing or improvising on site. This coordination is where conflicts get caught before they become expensive: a structural beam that would otherwise clash with a ventilation duct, an electrical riser positioned somewhere a plumbing line was also planned to run, a ceiling void that looked fine on paper but is not actually deep enough for everything that needs to pass through it. Resolving these clashes on paper, before construction starts, is far cheaper than resolving them on site once concrete has already been poured.
Once the construction documents are coordinated, they are submitted to LABSCA, the Lagos State Building Control Agency, for permitting and approval. Submitting a genuinely coordinated, resolved set of drawings — rather than one still full of unresolved clashes between disciplines — is what keeps this approval stage from turning into a slow back-and-forth of queries and resubmissions that can quietly cost a project months before a single foundation is dug.
Stage two: vendor collaboration and FF&E sourcing, running alongside construction
For a project with a tight, compact timeline, the sourcing of furniture, fixtures, and equipment — commonly shortened to FF&E, covering everything from light fittings to kitchen appliances to bespoke joinery — does not wait until construction is finished. It runs in parallel with the construction phase.
Vendors are identified based on the specifications set out in the interior design documentation, which by this point has already been coordinated into the overall construction documents from stage one. Once a vendor is selected, several distinct lead times have to be planned for and folded into the overall project programme: the time needed to finalise design and specifications with the vendor, production time in their workshop or factory, shipping time to Nigeria, customs clearance, and final delivery to site.
Running this track in parallel with construction is what makes a tight timeline achievable at all. A bespoke piece of joinery or an imported light fitting can take months to design, produce, and ship. If that process only began after practical completion of the building, the project would run significantly longer than it needs to.
But running FF&E procurement alongside construction also demands real discipline. Vendors have to be working from specifications that are genuinely settled, coordinated against the same construction documents guiding the builders on site — not an earlier version of the design that has since changed. This is exactly why stage one’s coordination matters so much: a vendor working from an uncoordinated or outdated drawing can produce a beautifully made piece that simply does not fit the space it was meant for.
Stage three: construction phase one, the carcass
Construction itself begins with what we call the carcass — the civil process of executing the actual structure and shell of the project. This stage includes the main building frame and roof, buried services (drainage and utility lines installed below ground before the structure rises above it), any swimming pool structure, drainage channels, and what is known as first fix: the initial rough-in of mechanical and electrical components, run through the structure before walls and ceilings are closed up and finished.
This stage sets the tone for everything that follows, because a small error made here does not stay contained to one location. It gets passed down and multiplied through every trade that builds on top of it afterward. A riser positioned even slightly incorrectly at this stage repeats that error on every floor it passes through. A first fix electrical or plumbing route that is not properly coordinated with the structural frame can mean opening up finished concrete later to correct something that should have been resolved on paper back in stage one.
This is why we oversee the carcass stage closely, working with the structural engineer and the services consultants together, rather than treating it as a stage that simply runs on its own momentum once construction documents have been issued.
Stage four: construction phase two, finishing
Once the carcass is complete, the project moves into finishing. This stage covers the final fixes of mechanical and electrical components — known as second fix, the completion of wiring, plumbing, and fittings that were only roughed in during first fix — the application of finishing layers such as plaster, tiling, and paint, and the installation of equipment, fixtures, and lighting, much of which by this point has been arriving on site through the FF&E track running in parallel since stage two.
Finishing also includes testing — confirming that mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems actually function correctly once fully installed — and snagging, the process of identifying small defects or incomplete items: a scuff on a painted wall, a door that does not close cleanly, a fitting installed slightly off level. Corrective works address whatever snagging turns up.
The end of this stage is what is formally called practical completion: the point at which the building is considered sufficiently complete for the client to take possession, even if a small number of minor items are still being finalised. Practical completion is a meaningful milestone, but it is not, in our experience, the actual end of the process.
Stage five: the defects liability period
The defects liability period begins after practical completion. This is the period during which the client actually moves into the project and begins living in or using the space day to day.
During this period, the client looks out for defects — issues that were not apparent at practical completion but surface once the building is genuinely lived in: a hairline crack that appears after the structure settles further, a fitting that develops a fault under regular use, a finish that reveals a flaw only once furniture has been moved in around it. These are recorded and passed to the contractor for corrective works.
This period usually lasts between six and twelve months. To make sure it is taken seriously by the contractor rather than treated as optional, a small percentage of the total project sum — known as retention — is held back by the client throughout this period. Retention is only released once the defects liability period has been completed successfully, meaning the recorded issues have actually been resolved. It is, in effect, the mechanism that keeps everyone accountable after the excitement of handover has passed.
Why treating this as one continuous process matters
Each of these five stages depends on the one before it being genuinely finished, not just declared finished under time pressure. Design coordination that skips a clash between two engineering disciplines pushes that clash downstream into the carcass stage, where it becomes far more expensive to fix. FF&E ordered against specifications that were not properly coordinated in stage one arrives to a space it does not fit. A carcass rushed to keep pace with an FF&E delivery schedule risks exactly the kind of structural or first fix error that later stages cannot cheaply undo. And a defects liability period treated as a formality, rather than genuinely monitored, is how small issues at handover become larger, unresolved ones a year later.
This is also precisely why we manage the full sequence ourselves — from architectural design through engineering coordination, construction oversight, FF&E procurement, and into the defects liability period — rather than treating any one of these as someone else’s problem once our part is done. A gap in responsibility between stages is usually where a project’s real problems hide.
What this means if you are planning a build
If you are early in planning a home or a larger project, it is worth asking any studio or contractor you are considering how they actually manage this sequence. Do they coordinate every engineering discipline into a single buildable set of drawings before submission to LABSCA, or does that coordination happen informally, on site, after problems have already appeared? Do they run FF&E procurement in parallel with construction against settled, coordinated specifications, or order pieces against a design that is still moving? And critically, who is actually watching the project during the defects liability period, once you have already moved in?
The answers tend to be a reliable early signal for how smooth, or how eventful, your own project is likely to be. Building a home well is less about any single dramatic decision and more about making sure five ordinary stages — coordination, procurement, structure, finishing, and defects liability — each genuinely finish before the next one begins.