Site Preparation Checklist for a New Build

Confirm planning permission has actually been granted — not just applied for — and read the decision notice in full, not just the headline description.

Many consents carry pre-commencement conditions: details that must be submitted and approved before any work, including site clearance, begins. Discharging these takes time, and starting before they are discharged can put the whole permission at risk.

If the site is listed, within a National Park, or in a Conservation Area, confirm in writing what that adds — material conditions, tree protection, or a need for a heritage statement, for example.

A groundworks price built without this information is really a price built on assumptions. Where a document does not yet exist — a percolation test, for example — it is worth knowing that before pricing rather than after excavation starts.

Request utility plans for the site from the relevant providers. These show the general location of existing mains but are not always accurate, particularly for older or private supplies.

On rural plots in particular, private water, drainage and power runs are often undocumented. The current owner or a neighbouring farmer's knowledge is frequently the most reliable source of information available, and is worth gathering before excavation starts near suspected routes.

Submit connection applications for new mains water, power, telecoms or a new drainage connection as early as possible. Lead times for new connections, especially in rural areas, can run to several months.

Deciding where stockpiles, welfare and material storage will sit before deliveries start prevents the single most common and avoidable cost on a constrained plot: double handling, because a stockpile ended up sitting on top of the drainage run or the access route.

A site visit before pricing typically covers the approach road as well as the plot itself, existing levels and any obvious drainage or ground clues, where spoil and materials could realistically sit, and whether the drawings match what is actually on the ground. Any gap between the two is worth resolving before a price is issued rather than during the build.

Trees protected by a Tree Preservation Order, or within a Conservation Area, generally cannot be felled, pruned or have their root protection area encroached on without permission — check this before any clearance, even of vegetation that looks incidental to the main build.

Bats, nesting birds and other protected species can affect the timing of clearance work: removing an old barn roof or mature hedge outside the bird nesting season, or after a survey has confirmed no roosting bats are present, avoids both delay and a legal problem discovered mid-clearance.

Where a site has an existing ecological or arboricultural report from the planning application, sharing it with the groundworks contractor avoids repeating the same checks and keeps clearance consistent with what was actually agreed with the planning authority.

A ground investigation — trial pits or boreholes, sometimes with laboratory testing — is far more useful commissioned before groundworks are priced than discovered as a surprise once excavation starts. It replaces an assumed foundation solution with a confirmed one, and removes a major source of provisional pricing.

For straightforward, flat sites without any history of filling or unusual conditions, a full investigation may be judged unnecessary by the engineer; for sloping sites, sites with a history of building or agricultural use, or anywhere ground conditions are genuinely unknown, it is time well spent before committing to a foundation design.

Skipping ahead in this sequence — for example, agreeing a start date before the foundation design is confirmed — is one of the more common causes of an avoidable delay once plant and people are already booked.

None of this is fixed — on smaller domestic projects a groundworks contractor will often help coordinate several of these items — but knowing who is expected to do what before work starts avoids something simply not happening because each side assumed the other was dealing with it.

Confirm the groundworks contractor holds public liability insurance appropriate to the job, and ask to see evidence of it before work starts rather than after — a reasonable request that any established contractor should be able to satisfy without delay.

On an unoccupied plot, basic site security — a secure gate, fencing where the site borders a public path or road, and clear signage — reduces both the risk of an accident involving someone with no business on site and the risk of theft from an unattended compound.

If there is genuine flexibility over when groundworks start, it is worth discussing the seasonal implications with the contractor rather than defaulting to the earliest possible date. Starting substructure work in late autumn on an exposed site can mean a materially different programme from the same job starting in spring.

Where a start date is fixed by other constraints — a mortgage offer, a tenancy ending, another trade already booked — flagging that early lets the contractor plan around it honestly rather than promising a programme that quietly ignores the season.

Most of these are not complicated to avoid — they simply need to be thought about before mobilisation rather than during it, which is the entire purpose of working through a checklist in the first place.

A short meeting on site immediately before mobilisation, with the client (or their agent) and the contractor together, resolves in minutes several things that would otherwise be guessed at or discovered piecemeal over the first week of work.