The blue tape is still on the subfloor in a Greenwich new build, and someone has just asked where the television should go above the fireplace. That is usually the moment a project tells on itself. If the integrator is arriving now, the expensive decisions have already been made by default: no shade pocket at the south glass, no clean pathway to the gate, no place for a rack with service clearance, no agreement on whether the kitchen wants a Lutron Palladiom keypad, a Crestron touch screen, or both.

The short answer is earlier than most teams think. Bring the integrator in during schematic design, while the reflected ceiling plan, window details, and millwork assumptions are still movable. That gap is still common. CE Pro reported in May 2026 that 35% of NKBA members said they need an integrator but do not know who to engage, while 68% said demand for integrated technology is increasing in their projects [1].

The Right Moment Is Before Anyone Says Prewire

Schematic Design Is Where the Job Gets Easier

At Cave Group, the first useful technology meeting is rarely about gear. It is about how the house will behave: which rooms need one-touch morning light, which doors should arm on the owner's exit path, which outdoor zones deserve real coverage, where the quiet equipment space lives, and whether the pool house is a simple audio zone or effectively a second residence. When those questions are answered on paper, the equipment list becomes straightforward. When they are answered after framing, every answer costs labor.

Lighting is usually the first place late coordination shows up. In residential work, Cave Group's lighting stack is Lutron. If the home is landing on HomeWorks QSX with a QSX-PRC-WIRED processor, Palladiom keypads, and Palladiom or Sivoia QS shades, panel locations, keypad counts, and pocket details already belong in design development. If the team is considering Lutron's newer fixture-level direction, the timing moves up again. On February 3, 2026, Lutron introduced its Intelligent Lighting portfolio at ISE, built around Ketra and Orluna fixtures, said the intelligence lives in the fixture rather than in control wire, and began a phased rollout from February 2026 [2]. That is not a finish selection. It affects zoning, home runs, rack space, and how much freedom the owner keeps when a Ketra scene changes after framing.

The same is true for audio and video. If the living room wants hidden Sonance architectural speakers, the outdoor kitchen wants James Loudspeaker coverage that survives weather and sightlines, and the gym, lounge, and terrace all want shared sources over Crestron DM NVX, those choices touch ceiling framing, conduit, blocking, ventilation, and trim reveals. The integrator does not need every SKU chosen at schematic design. The integrator does need the architecture to leave room for the system the client is paying for.

What Has To Be Locked Before Rough-In

Light, Glass, and Trim Do Not Forgive Indecision

The place most new builds lose money is the intersection of light, glass, and finish carpentry. A shade pocket that is too shallow stays too shallow. A keypad placed by convenience instead of use becomes the thing everyone notices. A plaster ceiling with no coordinated speaker location eventually gets a grille where the room wanted silence.

Before low-voltage rough, the coordination set should already define:

HomeWorks QSX processor and panel locations
keypad elevations and gang strategy for Lutron Palladiom controls
shade pocket sizes, power locations, and service access for Palladiom or Sivoia QS shades
speaker locations, backboxes, and blocking for Sonance or James Loudspeaker zones
display blocking, recessed boxes, and conduit paths back to the rack
power, cooling, and access requirements for the main equipment room

That list looks ordinary until it is late. Then it becomes carpentry change orders, drywall patches, and the kind of visual compromise that makes an expensive house feel oddly unresolved.

The Network Is Part of the House Now

One of the most persistent mistakes in luxury residential work is treating the network like a late equipment list instead of base infrastructure. On a Greenwich estate, the main house, gate, cameras, office, guest house, pool pavilion, and terrace all compete for the same invisible things: conduit, pathway separation, rack depth, intermediate pull points, outdoor enclosure space, and realistic heat management. A UniFi Enterprise design might center on an Enterprise Fortress Gateway, Pro XG aggregation, ECS switching, E7 coverage inside, and U7 Pro Outdoor coverage at the perimeter. The hard part is not the SKU. The hard part is deciding early enough where the fiber and copper actually go.

That matters even more because the network is doing more work every year. Ubiquiti's Network 10.5 release on June 25, 2026 added Test and Confirm, automatic rollback, firewall rule hit statistics, and 1500 MTU PPPoE support [6]. Those are useful operational tools, but they do not rescue a property where the only path to the pool house is a single buried cable with no spare conduit. Software can clean up a topology. It cannot create one after hardscape is in.

Most houses do not need PTP-aware AV switching. Some absolutely do. If the brief includes a media room, golf simulator, gym display wall, and outdoor entertainment area all sharing sources, network and AV can no longer be designed as separate layers. Ubiquiti's April 2026 EAV Switching launch brought Precision Time Protocol, sub-microsecond synchronization, and support for SMPTE ST 2110, Dante, and AES67 [7]. That is a reminder that distributed AV now depends on network design quality, not just on where the television is mounted.

Security Belongs on the Same Drawing Set

Security planning fails for the same reason AV planning fails: someone assumes it can be solved at trim. It cannot. Camera sightlines, gate control, door station height, leak sensor placement, panic coverage, lock power, and where a homeowner naturally arms or disarms the house all belong in the early coordination set.

At Cave Group, Cave Guard 24/7 and Deep Sentinel are not interchangeable ideas. Cave Guard 24/7 is the monitored alarm layer: intrusion, fire, smoke, CO, water leak, freeze, and power-loss events, built on Alarm.com and a UL-listed Five Diamond central station. Deep Sentinel is the live video layer. One is about sensor events and dispatch. The other is about what the cameras can see and how fast someone can intervene. Those are different wiring paths, different viewpoints, and different owner expectations.

UniFi's Protect 7.1 update in May 2026 is a good example of how sophisticated the video side has become: custom video walls in Site Manager, expanded ONVIF support, and a new UniFi NVR with double camera capacity, direct display output, and local Edge AI for vector search and re-identification [8]. If the owner wants one reliable view of the front gate, garage court, and rear terrace, that outcome starts with mount heights, coverage angles, and pathways, not with an app at handover.

The Control Layer Should Show Up In The Elevations

The Wall Tells You How the House Will Feel

The Lutron keypad in the powder room is one of the few devices every guest will see. The bedside control is one of the first things the owner touches in the dark. The mudroom control point is where arriving, leaving, lighting, and alarm behavior all meet. None of those are minor details, and none of them should be delegated to whoever is closest to the wall at trim.

That is why the control layer should be drawn into the elevations before millwork is signed off. Some rooms want almost nothing visible. Some need a dedicated touch surface because the room truly carries multiple systems. Crestron's residential 80 Series, announced January 20, 2026, brought 8- and 10-inch wall-mount and tabletop touch screens with PoE+ or Wi-Fi connectivity and native Crestron Home OS integration, with residential availability beginning in Q2 2026 [4]. That gives more placement flexibility, not less reason to plan. In a kitchen, an always-available Crestron touch screen may be exactly right. In a quiet primary suite, a Lutron Palladiom keypad and a carefully designed bedside sequence may be the better move.

The mistake is thinking more interfaces means better control. Good planning usually removes interfaces. The owner should not need four ways to do the same thing. The owner should need the right control in the right place: Lutron for lighting and shades, Crestron for whole-home orchestration, and mobile control as a supplement rather than a crutch.

The Rack Room Tells the Truth About the Drawings

The equipment room is where coordination stops being theoretical. A large residence might center on a Crestron CP4-R in the main rack, with DIN-AP4-R or MC4-R processors extending control to a guest house, wellness wing, or pool pavilion, while DM NVX handles source distribution, Sonance amplification feeds interior zones, and James Loudspeaker covers exterior listening areas. That architecture only stays orderly if the room has dedicated power, UPS strategy, cooling, grounding, service loops, and enough clearance for a technician to work without dismantling the room.

Scale is less theoretical than it used to be. In April 2026, Crestron said Home OS 4.10 raised validated system size guidance for the CP4-R to 500 lighting loads, 100 thermostats, 100 streaming cameras, 24 AV receivers, and up to 250 rooms in a single-processor setup, with multi-processor systems reaching 1,000 lighting loads [3]. On June 30, 2026, Crestron also released Configure Pro as its professional configuration platform for Crestron Home projects, built around standardized no-programming workflows, visual keypad configuration, and faster, more consistent deployment across dealer teams [5]. The lesson is not that every residence should be huge. The lesson is that current platforms can support very large homes if the architecture is disciplined from the beginning.

That discipline is what owners actually feel at turnover. It is the difference between a rack that can be serviced cleanly and one that nobody wants to touch. It is the difference between fast troubleshooting and hours spent tracing unlabeled bundles. It is the difference between a house that can absorb a future guest house, wellness room, or detached office and a house that is already at its limit on day one.

A Practical Timeline for a Luxury New Build

Before the Bid Set

If the owner wants a clean project, these decisions should be on paper before the bid set is issued:

the control platform, usually Crestron Home around a CP4-R, DIN-AP4-R, or MC4-R strategy
the lighting and shade platform, usually Lutron HomeWorks QSX with keypad and shade families identified
the room-by-room technology program, including AV, outdoor audio, security, gate, and wellness spaces
the network topology, including outbuildings, exterior coverage, WAN backup, and main rack location
the display and speaker approach, especially where hidden architectural audio or shared video distribution changes construction

Before Low-Voltage Rough

By the time cable is being pulled, the integrator should have already released:

conduit and cable pathway drawings
rack power, cooling, and backing requirements
keypad and touch screen elevations
TV blocking, box, and recess details
shade pocket, power, and access details
camera, door station, gate, and exterior access point positions
speaker locations, backboxes, and coordination with ceiling and millwork trades

Before Millwork and Finish Sign-Off

Before cabinetry and finish details are frozen, the team should have final answers on:

keypad style, finish, engraving, and exact alignment with trim
touch screen locations and whether they are wall, tabletop, or hidden
flush speaker grille placement and paint strategy
equipment closet ventilation grilles and access panels
visible versus concealed Wi-Fi and camera hardware
any future-ready provisions, such as spare conduit to a pool house, gate, or office

If that sounds early, it is. That is the point. The expensive part of AV in new construction is not the box count. It is the cost of making late decisions inside finished architecture.

Bring the integrator in when the architect is still moving lines, not when the electrician is already drilling studs. That is when the system is still part of the house instead of something being fitted into it.

New Construction AV Planning: When to Bring an Integrator Into a Luxury New Build