Ask ten homeowners what the electrician does on a new build and most will describe the last day: outlets, switch plates, light fixtures going up. That’s trim — the visible tenth of the work. The other nine tenths happened weeks earlier, inside open walls, and it’s the part that determines whether the house works well for the next forty years.
This is the stage-by-stage version of new construction electrical: what happens, when, and which decisions are nearly free before drywall and painfully expensive after.
Stage one: temp power
Before framing gets far, the site needs power. A temporary service — a pole or panel with GFCI-protected receptacles — gets permitted, set, and inspected so every trade on the job has something safe to plug into.
It sounds like a formality. It isn’t. Temp power that’s undersized or badly placed means extension cords snaking across a muddy site all winter, and a saw that browns out every time the compressor kicks on. We site it where the work will actually be, sized for the tools that will actually run.
Stage two: the design pass (before anyone frames)
This is the stage that gets skipped, and it’s the one with the best return.
Before framing, someone should be answering: how big is the service? Where does the panel live, and does the framing accommodate it? Where does the utility come in — overhead or underground, and has the trench been coordinated with the excavator who is still on site? How many circuits does the kitchen need for the appliance package actually selected? Is there a heat pump coming, an EV charger, a hot tub, a shop in the garage?
Every one of those is a drawing decision costing nothing, or a change order costing plenty. It’s the whole argument for having the electrical design package — load calculations, panel schedules, power and lighting layouts — done properly rather than improvised on site.
Stage three: rough-in
Framing is up, the roof is on, the building is dry. Now the electrician moves in, usually alongside or just after plumbing and HVAC.
Rough-in is everything that has to be inside the walls: boxes set at consistent heights, home runs pulled to the panel, cable stapled and protected where it crosses framing, nail plates where a drywall screw could find a wire later. Panel set and circuits landed. Low-voltage runs — network, cameras, audio — pulled in the same pass, because a Cat6 run costs almost nothing now and a fortune later.
Good rough-in looks obsessive: parallel runs, consistent heights, cable dressed rather than draped. That isn’t vanity. It’s what makes the inspection pass on the first walk, what keeps the insulation and drywall crews from damaging wire, and what the next electrician will read twenty years from now.
Stage four: rough inspection
The inspector checks what will soon be invisible: box fill, conductor protection, grounding and bonding, circuit counts, AFCI and GFCI coverage, and that everything matches the permit.
There is exactly one goal here: pass the first time. A failed rough inspection doesn’t just cost a re-inspection fee — it stops insulation, which stops drywall, which moves every trade behind us. We schedule our own inspections and meet the inspector ourselves precisely so that this never becomes the builder’s problem.
Stage five: insulation, drywall, and the quiet period
The electrician disappears for a few weeks. Walls close. Whatever is in them is now permanent unless someone is willing to open them again.
This is the deadline everything above has been racing toward, and it’s why “we’ll figure that out later” is such an expensive sentence on a construction site.
Stage six: trim
Devices, plates, fixtures, fans, the panel schedule labeled from actual circuit tracing rather than guesswork. Dimmers matched to the lamps so nothing flickers. Smart switches and lighting controls programmed rather than just installed.
Trim is where the quality of the rough-in shows. Boxes set at inconsistent depths mean plates that don’t sit flat. Sloppy home runs mean a panel nobody can read. Trim can only be as good as what’s behind it.
Stage seven: final inspection and closeout
Final inspection, then closeout: everything tested, the panel labeled, GFCIs and AFCIs verified, and the documentation handed over. For our builder clients that means as-builts and panel schedules that go in the project file — so the next project, the next owner, and the next electrician all start from facts.
The decisions worth making early
If you take one thing from this: the cheap week is the week before framing. That’s when a bigger service, a conduit stub to the garage for a future charger, a chase to the roof for solar, a generator interlock, and three more kitchen circuits all cost a rounding error. After drywall they cost a project.
Building in Saratoga County or anywhere across Upstate New York? Send us the plans and the bid date — we’d rather be in the conversation at design than be the reason the schedule slips at rough-in.