The opening

1. 05

   The landlord's consent

   Before anything. A lease that does not allow the work the business needs is a problem to settle before there is a quote.

2. 04

   Services

   Extraction, gas, water, electrics and air conditioning. They decide the schedule of a commercial space, and they are what almost everybody leaves until after the finishes.

3. 03

   Equipment and installation

   The kitchen, the counter, the refrigeration. It arrives once the services are in — not before, or it stands in the way of the work.

4. 02

   Inspections and licensing

   A finished space without an inspection does not open. It does not depend on whoever does the work, and it is the stage most often left to the end.

5. 01

   Opening day

   The date already given to suppliers, to staff and often to the public. Everything counts back from it.

What usually goes wrong in this kind of job

• Leaving extraction to the end

  In a kitchen it is the service that rules everything else: it runs where it has to run, and the ceiling and the layout organise themselves around it.

• Taking delivery of equipment too early

  A counter still boxed in the middle of a building site takes up space, collects dust and slows down whoever is working there.

• Booking the opening with no room for inspection

  Between the finished work and the open door there are licences that depend on nobody standing on the site.