New builds lose more time and money to out-of-order site work than to any single line item. Here's the sequence that works on Lakes Region ground.
Boundary survey staked, septic design done (test pits feed it), site plan drawn, permits in hand — including a Shoreland Permit if you're near the water. Machine hours are expensive; moving a planned house on paper is free.
Pits at the foundation corners and the septic area answer the three Lakes Region questions: where's the ledge, where's the water, what's the soil? Granite two feet down at one corner might move the house twenty feet and save five figures of hammering. This is the single highest-leverage step and the one skipped most often.
Clear the building envelope, driveway line, and utility corridor — not the whole lot (trees you keep are landscaping you don't buy later). Build the driveway's base now: every concrete truck, lumber load, and crane arrives on it. A construction entrance that trucks can't climb in the rain stalls the whole job.
Foundation excavated to spec, below NH's 48-inch frost depth, with over-dig for form work, water managed, and suitable material stockpiled for backfill instead of trucked twice.
Water, power, and septic trenches happen while the machine is already there — mobilization is a real cost, and paying it twice is the classic scheduling penalty.
After the concrete cures: backfill, rough grade, then the finish grade that pitches everything away from the house — the cheapest basement waterproofing ever installed. Topsoil re-spread, and the lot is ready for lawn.
One crew for the whole site package — clearing through finish grade, coordinated with your builder.
