Procurement on a new-build site: from house type to goods-in

Procurement on a new-build estate looks nothing like procurement for domestic callouts. You are not ordering for one job — you are ordering the same wiring package, over and over, across dozens of near-identical plots, on a programme that moves. Get the process right once and it scales beautifully. Get it wrong and you are re-typing the same materials list forty times and losing track of what landed on which plot.

The unique challenge of repeating plots

A new-build site is built from a handful of house types. The four-bed detached has the same first-fix and second-fix package whether it is plot 3 or plot 31. That repetition is an opportunity — but only if your system understands it. Treating every plot as a blank job means re-specifying the same kit each time, which is slow and invites mistakes. The plots also progress independently: plot 3 might be at second fix while plot 31 is still a slab, so 'order materials for the site' is rarely the right unit of work. The right unit is the plot.

Spec the house type once

The fix is to define the materials package per house type, not per plot. In ApexSpark you build a house type kit — the full list of materials a given house type needs — once. From then on, any plot of that type can generate its order straight from the kit. Change the spec for the four-bed detached and every future plot of that type picks up the change. You are maintaining a handful of house types instead of a list per plot.

• Define each house type's materials kit a single time.
• Generate a plot's purchase order from its house type in one step.
• Adjust per plot for the odd variation without re-keying the whole list.
• Keep first-fix and second-fix packages organised by stage.

Plot-level purchase orders

Because orders are raised against the plot, spend tracks against the plot too. You can see committed spend the moment a PO goes out, received spend as materials arrive, and the gap between them — per plot, per house type, and across the whole site. When the builder asks where the money has gone on plots 1 to 10, the answer is already there rather than something you reconstruct from delivery notes.

Goods-in, in the bay, on a phone

The last mile of new-build procurement is the delivery bay. A wagon arrives, and someone needs to confirm what actually turned up against what was ordered — usually standing in the mud, not sat at a desk. ApexSpark handles goods-in on a phone: the receiver checks off quantities, flags shortages or damage, and the plot's received spend updates immediately. Engineers confirm quantities and condition; they never see values, so prices stay in the office where they belong.

Put together, house type kits, plot-level POs and phone-based goods-in turn a sprawling, repetitive ordering job into a tight loop: spec once, generate per plot, receive in the bay, watch the numbers roll up. That is the difference between procurement that scales with the site and procurement that fights it.

See plots, house type kits and goods-in working together. Explore ApexSpark procurement →