A year before installation, you locked in the range, the hardware, and the tile for a client’s kitchen. The builder signed off on the specs. Then, eleven months later, you find out at a site walk that none of it was ever ordered. The range now has a six-week lead time. The tile pattern is discontinued. You are reselecting finishes for three rooms on a schedule that was supposed to be locked months ago.
This is not a rare scenario. It is one of the more common ways a project gets knocked sideways without the designer making a single mistake, and it raises a question more designers are asking out loud: if the builder sat on your specifications for a year, can you bill for the time it takes to fix what they broke?
The community’s answer leaned hard toward yes, and the more useful part of the conversation was how designers are turning that yes into an actual reselection fee built into their contracts before the problem ever shows up on a job site.
Why Specs Sit Unordered for Months on Builder-Led Jobs
On most builder-led projects, the designer specifies and the builder, or the builder’s procurement contact, places the order. That handoff works fine until specifications sit untouched for months while the builder focuses on framing, plumbing, and electrical. Long-lead items like ranges, custom tile, and specialty hardware are exactly the things that need to be ordered early, and exactly the things that get deprioritized when nobody on the build side owns the follow-up.
Ask around the Interior Design Community, and you will hear a version of this story on repeat. The designer did the work on time, the approval was logged, and the order simply never went in. By the time anyone notices, the lead time has shifted, the SKU may be discontinued, and the designer is back at the sourcing table reselecting materials that were already chosen and approved once.
This pattern has gotten more common as design-build firms push designers to finalize specs further in advance, sometimes a full year before finish work even starts on site. The earlier a spec gets locked, the longer it sits in someone else’s queue, and the easier it is for a one-line order to fall through the cracks between framing, rough-in, and finish phases.
That distinction matters because it separates two different problems that often get lumped together. A true backorder, where a product the designer specified and the builder ordered correctly goes out of stock through no one’s fault, is a supply chain risk every project absorbs. A builder failing to place the order at all for a year is not a supply chain risk. It is a process failure, and the comments on this thread made that distinction immediately.
@lindseyputzier put it bluntly:
“Of course. It was in stock when you selected it originally. It’s not on you if no one placed the order for an ENTIRE YEAR! 🤦🏻♀️”
@lindseyputzier
That is the baseline most designers in the thread worked from. If the product was available when specified and stayed available, the gap between selection and reselection is the builder’s timeline failure, not something the designer should absorb for free.
What an Unplanned Reselect Actually Costs You
Reselecting is never just swapping in a similar item. It means going back to vendors to check current pricing and lead times, often finding the original product gone and needing a comparable replacement, rebuilding the presentation board, and walking the client through why a decision made a year ago is suddenly back on the table. None of that is fast, and none of it was in the original scope of work.
On a single kitchen, that can easily mean three or four hours of vendor calls, a revised proposal, and a follow-up client meeting before a new selection is even confirmed. Multiply that across a whole-home build with several long-lead categories, and the unplanned hours stack up into real money the designer never priced into the original fee.
Several designers in the thread treat that time the same way they treat any other billable hour. @waldron_designs was the most direct about it:
“I charge for all my time. All. Of. It.”
@waldron_designs
That is a defensible position when the cause is clear. Someone else’s failure created work that was never part of the original agreement, and a reselection fee is how you recover the time it takes to redo it. But the thread also surfaced an important boundary on when that logic stops applying. @myrick_interior_design pushed back on charging across the board:
“In your contract, set a limit to the number of revisions. If something is out of stock- with no fault of the client or contractor- then I don’t see how you can justify charging additional for that. Out of stocks and back orders are unfortunately part of our everyday challenges in this industry.”
@myrick_interior_design
That kind of revision cap only holds up if reselection has its own separate definition elsewhere in the agreement. Otherwise, a builder-caused reselection gets absorbed into the same capped count meant for client-driven changes, and one missed order can eat the whole allowance. For a closer look at where that limit belongs, see How Many Design Revisions Should You Include Without Losing Time or Profit?
Both designers are right, and the difference between them is the difference between a builder process failure and an industry-wide supply chain reality. One is billable rework caused by someone not doing their job. The other is a normal cost of doing business in a market where lead times shift constantly. Treating them the same, in either direction, either undercharges for real rework or overcharges a client for bad luck nobody could control. Knowing which one you are dealing with is what decides whether the reselection fee applies at all.
Writing a Reselection Fee Clause That Actually Holds Up
The fix several designers described is not a single sentence buried in the standard terms. It is a clause that defines reselection on its own, separate from the revision language most contracts already include.
@kenneth_crawford_interiors_ outlined how that separation works in practice:
“In my contract, I state that resection will not be charged. However, if the client is constantly changing, they will be charged in X amount an hour for that on top of my commission. Some clients love to abuse the Designer and their time. I don’t put up with that.”
@kenneth_crawford_interiors_
The structure being described draws a hard line between two different triggers. A client changing their mind after approval is a revision, and it gets billed at a stated hourly rate with a cap built into the agreement. A reselect forced by someone else’s failure to execute, like a builder who never placed the order, is a separate category, and it should be defined separately so the client and the builder both know who is responsible before the situation ever comes up.
If you want a closer look at how that same boundary should read when a builder tries to take over the buying process entirely, GC Wants to Buy Everything? Here’s How Designers Protect Scope and Profit covers the procurement side of this exact problem.
That clause should specify a few concrete things: how long after approval the builder has to place a long-lead order, what proof of placement looks like, such as a confirmation number, a purchase order, or a vendor acknowledgment, and what hourly rate or flat reselection fee applies if reselection becomes necessary because that window was missed. Vague language like “additional services may be billed” gives you no leverage when a builder disputes the charge later. A specific trigger and a specific rate do.
Educational content, not legal advice. Run any new clause language past an attorney familiar with your state’s contract law before it goes into a signed agreement.
Catching the Problem Before the Lead Time Runs Out
The cleanest way to avoid the entire conversation is to never find out about a missed order eleven months in. That means building a checkpoint into the workflow instead of assuming an approved spec equals a placed order.
A simple version: thirty, sixty, and ninety days after a long-lead item is approved, someone, whether that is the designer, a project manager, or the builder’s own procurement contact, confirms in writing that the order has gone in and provides a confirmation number or expected ship date. If that confirmation never comes, the gap gets flagged while there is still time to fix it without a reselect at all.
On smaller jobs without a project manager, that tracking job tends to default to the designer simply because no one else owns it. It is worth building a line item for that tracking time into the agreement too, since chasing confirmations from a builder who is not responding is its own kind of unpaid labor.
That kind of tracking matters even more once you account for how one missed order multiplies. @reginasturrock pointed out that a single reselect rarely stays contained to one item:
“Why, of course! If it’s not ordered and the specifications have been in place ~ by the way this could result in significant time to reselect other materials that are connected.”
@reginasturrock
This ripple effect is exactly why setting client expectations for lead times at the start of a project matters just as much as chasing down a builder mid-project.
A tile that anchors a backsplash pattern also drives grout color, trim, and sometimes the surrounding cabinetry finish. When that tile has to be reselected, the designer is not picking one new product. They are checking every connected selection against the new option, which is exactly why the billable hours add up fast and exactly why a procurement log that flags missed orders early is worth the time it takes to maintain. A reselection fee covers the redo. A tracking system is what keeps you from needing one.
What This Means for Your Next Contract Review
If you take one thing from this thread, make it this: a reselection caused by someone else’s missed order is not a favor you owe a client or a builder. It is rework triggered by a process failure, and it belongs in your contract as its own line item, with its own rate, separate from revisions and separate from true backorders.
The next time you update your agreement, add three things: a definition of what counts as a builder-caused reselect, a required confirmation step that proves an order was placed within a set window, and a stated reselection fee or hourly rate for the time it takes to fix it when that window gets missed. None of that requires confrontation with the builder in the moment. It just means the conversation already happened in writing, months before anyone needed to have it out loud.
@filmoreclark summed up why designers keep running into this in the first place:
“what’s heartbreaking is when material is chosen. You clearly stated the lead time for the material and for some reason, the contractor doesn’t order it and the product gets pushed out. crazy!”
@filmoreclark
The lead time was stated. The selection was approved. The only thing missing was a system that caught the gap before it became a year-long oversight. Build that system into the contract once, with a reselection fee attached, and you stop having this argument project after project.
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Product Markups and Client Trust: How Transparent Should Designers Be?
Interesting piece—totally shows how workflow gaps derail projects. In Suplery we see the same pain point across design-build teams: miscommunication and stock issues slow everything down. My statement can be biased, but a solid bin of best practices helps keep orders solid and on schedule. For designers, the platform offers a shared cart and real-time order building, reducing back-and-forth. If you’re a designer or architect on high-lead items, this is a must-use solution to prevent reselection chaos. Suplery makes procurement smoother, and I’m convinced it helps maintain margins by unblocking delays.