We have been supplying kitchens since 1996, and a fair share of that has been to main contractors rather than homeowners. So this is written from the supplier’s side of the table — the questions we would want asked of us, and the ones that separate a supplier who will hold a programme from one who will cost you weeks.
Price is the easy part of a kitchen package, and the part most tender comparisons stop at. It is also the part least likely to hurt you. What hurts is a supplier who cannot call off in the sequence you need, cannot hold a colour across a phased site, or cannot put fitters on site the week you need them.
Programme: can they call off unit by unit?
This is the first question and the most revealing. A supplier geared to retail thinks in whole kitchens. A supplier geared to sites thinks in call-offs.
Ask specifically: can we take delivery unit by unit, or plot by plot, against our programme rather than yours? What notice do you need for a call-off? What happens when the programme slips by three weeks — do you store, and at whose cost? Who sequences deliveries when two blocks are running at different speeds?
Storage is where this gets real. A supplier who cannot hold finished goods will push completed kitchens onto your site, and then you are storing painted doors in a building that is still wet, with plasterers and painters working around them. That is damage, and the argument about whose damage it is will consume more management time than it is worth.
Get the storage and the sequencing answer in writing before you get the price.
Spec-holding: unit 1 to unit 400
On a phased development the first kitchen and the last might be eighteen months apart. Everything about the specification has to survive that gap.
Colour consistency is the one that bites. Paint batches vary. A supplier working from a documented, referenced colour — a BS or RAL reference held on file rather than a shade chosen off a chart in a meeting — can match unit 400 to unit 1. A supplier who cannot tell you the reference will produce a late phase that is subtly off, and it will only be visible when a buyer views two plots on the same day. Then it is your problem.
Range continuity is the other. Door ranges get discontinued. Ask what happens if the specified range is withdrawn mid-programme: is there a documented equivalent, who approves the substitution, and does it come at cost to you? A supplier who has not thought about this will tell you it will not happen.
Insist that the specification is a document, not a conversation. Named range, named colour with reference, named carcase, named hardware with model numbers, named appliances. Anything described rather than named is a gap somebody will fill later, and not in your favour.
Supply chain depth
Things get damaged on sites. That is not a failure, it is a fact, and the question is how quickly it gets fixed.
Ask what is available ex-stock rather than made to order. Ask what the lead time is on a single replacement front in the specified colour — not the whole kitchen, one door, because that is what you will actually need at eleven o’clock on a Thursday. Ask whether they hold painting capacity or whether every finished item goes out to a third party, because that determines whether a replacement takes days or weeks.
Express ranges matter here more than they do in a private house. When a handover date is fixed and a door is damaged, the difference between a shade held ready and a shade painted to order is the difference between a snag and a delayed completion.
It is worth knowing who actually makes the doors. Ours come from the STORI collection by Uform, and the cabinets are built in our own workshop in Rooskey. Two clear points of manufacture, both answerable. A supplier who cannot tell you where their product is made cannot tell you when it will arrive either.
Labour: whose fitters are these?
Ask directly whether the fitting teams are employed or subcontracted, and do not accept our teams as an answer without a follow-up.
It matters for three reasons. Employed teams are consistent, so the standard on plot 40 matches plot 4. They are accountable through the supplier rather than through a third party you have no contract with. And when something needs putting right, they come back, because they are still on your site next week.
Our own cabinet makers fit every kitchen we supply, and we have never worked any other way.
Then the site paperwork, which should be routine and often is not. RAMS specific to the works, not a generic document with your project name pasted on. Evidence of induction for every operative who will attend. Insurance certificates current for the full programme, not expiring in month three. And a clear position on site conduct, PPE, waste and hoarding.
A supplier who is slow producing this at tender stage will be slow producing it on site.
Snagging and handover
Close-out has to be unit level. A single sign-off across a block is not close-out, it is an aspiration.
Establish who snags the kitchen — you, them, or jointly — and what the response time is on a snag raised after sign-off. Establish what counts as complete: every door and drawer operating correctly, gaps consistent along each run, worktop joints sealed, appliances tested rather than inspected, mechanisms operated through full travel.
Then the homeowner pack, which is where suppliers routinely let contractors down. Every unit should hand over with warranty documentation, appliance manuals and registration details, care guidance specific to the finish supplied, and the colour reference so a buyer can touch up a scuff in three years without ringing you. If the supplier does not produce that pack, your customer care team will end up writing it themselves, forty times.
Aftercare, long after the hoarding is down
Your obligation to a purchaser outlives your presence on the site, and the supplier’s willingness to honour theirs is the last thing anybody checks and the first thing that goes wrong.
Ask what the product warranties actually are, in years, and what they cover. Ours run at 5 and 15 years as standard across the collection, with a 15-year warranty on the Vauth-Sagel storage systems. Ask who a homeowner rings in year four, and whether that number reaches the supplier or a call centre. Ask whether the warranty transfers on resale.
And ask the blunt one: will you still exist? A supplier trading thirty years, family-owned, with a workshop and a showroom you can drive to, is a different proposition from one assembled for a contract. We have answered the phone in Rooskey since 1996, and it is answered by someone whose surname is on the van.
The checklist, condensed
- Can you call off unit by unit against our programme, and will you store if we slip?
- What is the documented specification — range, colour reference, carcase, hardware, appliances?
- How do you guarantee colour consistency from the first unit to the last?
- What happens if a specified range is discontinued mid-programme?
- What is the lead time on one replacement front in our colour?
- Are the fitting teams employed or subcontracted?
- Can we see project-specific RAMS, inductions and current insurance?
- How is snagging closed out at unit level, and what is the response time?
- What is in the homeowner handover pack?
- What are the warranties, who honours them, and do they transfer?
Ten questions. Any supplier worth putting on a tender list will answer all ten without hesitating, and the answers will tell you more than the price will.
If you would like ours in writing, we will put together a tender pack for your project — specification templates, warranty detail, insurance and RAMS, and a programme-based call-off proposal. There is more on how we work with the trade on our developers page, and the full range of what we supply is in the collection. Get in touch and tell us the unit numbers and the dates.
