Specifying cabinetry for a multi-unit development

A 120-unit block is rarely 120 problems — it is usually three or four repeating unit-types plus a handful of corner and ground-floor oddities. Buyers who think 'per door' drown in a spec that never freezes; the real number you specify against is the count of distinct unit-types.

Before anything is drawn, sort the whole development into unit-types by cabinetry and opening layout — Type A, Type B, the corner variant, the accessible unit. Specify once per type. Decide up front which types step up a tier (say the premium corner units) and which share one spec, because that grouping is your commercial call, not the factory's.

The developer's PDF and the concrete that actually gets poured are two different things. Walls run out of plumb, slab levels drift, a service riser lands off-position — and a cabinet drawn to the plan will not fit the built unit. Multiply that gap across a run and you have a batch of rework, not a snag.

Freeze nothing until ALUMAX has physically surveyed a completed show-unit and drawn the cabinetry and openings from the real shell, not the architect's PDF. That survey becomes the master drawing set every repeat is cut from. Where the built shell disagrees with the plan, reconcile it before the spec is frozen — not on the twentieth unit.

On one unit you can get away with a single board everywhere; at a hundred, the wet zones expose it. Under Sarawak humidity and daily wet use, a plain board carcass under the sink or in a shower vanity swells and de-laminates — and now it is not one snag, it is the same snag in every unit.

Step the wet zones up off ordinary board: specify moisture-resistant wet-zone carcasses — AquaGlass (ACP), honeycomb or full aluminium — for sink bases, vanities and any run that meets water, and keep board for the dry zones. Moisture-resistant resists water; it is not waterproof, so seal edges and cut-outs and use stainless fixings. In the kitchen, remember standard ACP is combustible: directly behind the hob use non-combustible metal, glass, tile or stone and keep ACP on the splash walls. Set all of this by zone so it repeats identically.

Colour rarely drifts because a panel is 'wrong' — it drifts because a second production run, a different dye-lot, or a laminate sitting against an aluminium front reads differently under real light. On one kitchen nobody notices; across a corridor of handover units, two 'same white' doors side by side is the first thing a buyer sees.

Fix one physical master sample and hold every batch to it, and name the tolerance in the numbers your supplier already uses — a delta-E colour band — instead of the words 'match the sample'. Confirm the achievable band with the supplier before you freeze it, inspect every batch under one consistent light before install, and reject drift at incoming, not at handover.

The danger at scale is not the first decision — it is the fortieth quiet change. A site foreman 'improves' a hinge, a colour is swapped to whatever is in stock, a dimension creeps — and because nothing was frozen, half the run ends up different from the other half.

Once the prototype is approved, freeze the specification and let nothing alter it except a written variation. Route every 'can we just…' through one change-control channel — an RFI — that ELS by ALUMAX logs, prices and rules on before any unit moves. One spec owner, one paper trail; verbal changes on site do not count.

Bulk work fails when quality is judged once, at the end. If the first real inspection is at handover, a material fault or a drifted dimension has already been reproduced across the whole batch — and you are unbuilding units, not snagging them.

Inspect in four passes and sign each one off: incoming material against the spec, factory or pre-delivery against the master drawing, installation in the unit, and final handover. ALUMAX owns these QC gates and the warranty behind its scope. Catch a fault at incoming and it is one rejected batch; catch it at handover and it is every unit.

Not every unit-type wants the same factory. A standardised, fast, cost-controlled platform suits the repeating bulk of the development; a made-to-spec line suits the corner units, the odd sizes and the higher-tier finishes. Buyers get burned when they force everything down a single route.

Route the bulk to the standardised engine — FLYHOME by ZBOM — and the non-standard or higher-spec units to made-to-spec cabinetry, but hold both behind ONE specification and one drawing set so they still match at handover. ALUMAX owns the drawings, samples, QC and warranty across both engines, so you manage one relationship, not two factories.

A repeatable unit is never just cabinetry — it is cabinetry landing cleanly against tiling, waterproofing, MEP, air-conditioning and ceilings, all repeated identically. When each trade freezes its own spec on its own, the unit-types quietly diverge and the interfaces clash unit after unit.

Put one orchestrator over the run. ELS by ALUMAX develops the specification and coordinates the other trades — electrical, plumbing, tiling and waterproofing, AC and ceilings — while ALUMAX owns the drawings, samples, QC and warranty for its own scope. For commercial terms, unit-type schedules and the BOQ, route to ALUMAX Contract; for the detail on each step, lean on the professional guides that cover typing, prototyping, shop drawings, BOQ lines and QC checkpoints one at a time.