Guides · Contract

Who supplies a hotel's stone tops

In short. On a hotel project a stone top does not have one supplier: it has four, and usually one of them appears in the contract. The design practice draws it, the stone shop measures and cuts it, somebody carries it to the floor, the joiner or the main contractor fits it. Every handover is a point where responsibility changes hands, and almost every problem we see starts at one of those handovers rather than in the stone.

Why "who supplies the top" has no single answer

Whoever writes a hotel specification puts the stone top on one line, inside the furniture package or inside the finishes, and assumes somebody will take care of all of it. In practice four parties take care of it, and the boundary between them is written down nowhere.

The design practice chooses the material and draws the shape. The stone shop surveys, cuts, works the edges and the cutouts, and delivers. Carrying it to the floor is a job of its own, with equipment and people who often belong neither to the stone shop nor to the main contractor. Fitting, finally, may fall to the joiner who made the carcasses, to the building contractor, or to the stone shop.

Four parties and three boundaries. The top arrives intact if the three boundaries are written down; it arrives broken, or arrives correct and will not go in, if nobody has written them.

Who surveys, and why it always comes too late

The survey is the moment that decides everything else, and it is almost always squeezed between two trades that are not waiting for it.

A stone top is measured on finished carcasses in position, not on the drawing: stone does not adjust on site the way a panel does, and a millimetre recovered with a plane does not exist. But the carcasses arrive late, the site is full of other trades, and whoever surveys finds walls not yet plastered and services not yet closed.

The practical consequence is a date in the project programme, and not a vague one: the day the carcasses are fitted and measurable. From there to the delivered top runs the fabrication time, which is machine time and does not compress. Putting the survey after the plaster and before the carcasses arrive is programming a survey that will have to be done again.

Who carries the top up

This is the handover that generates the most argument and the easiest to settle in advance, because it comes down to three questions: where delivery ends, who unloads the lorry, who carries the piece to the floor. The difference between kerbside delivery and delivery to the floor with fitting is not a commercial nuance: they are two different supplies, with two different prices and two different liabilities. We have written about it at length in the guide to delivery and fitting, including carrier liability and the reservation to write on the delivery note.

What is worth adding here, because it concerns a hotel rather than a house, is the access survey. In a hotel the route from the lorry to the room passes through doors, lifts and stairs that somebody has to measure before cutting. A three-metre top that will not go into the lift is solved with one more joint, and the joint is decided on the drawing: finding out on delivery day means cutting the slab on site, which means cutting it badly.

Who answers if a slab breaks on site

It depends where it breaks, and the honest answer is that it almost always depends on what was written beforehand.

If it breaks in transit, the question lies between the sender and the carrier, and the reservation written at the moment of unloading is the only document that counts: a delivery note signed without reservations closes the matter before anyone has opened the packaging.

If it breaks during fitting, the question lies between the fitter and the supplier, and turns on two verifiable facts: whether the base was flat and rigid as required, and whether the piece could be handled by the number of people planned for. A slab that arrives correct and breaks on an out-of-level base is not a defect in the slab; a thin slab without the suction pads and the people needed is not the joiner's problem.

If it breaks later, with the top already in place, then you are back at the design: overhangs, cutouts, bearings. Those are the subjects of the guide to overhangs and the one on cracks at cutouts.

One line avoids almost all of these arguments, and it belongs in the specification: who supplies and who fits the supports, and what condition the carcasses must be in when the top is laid.

How many slabs are needed, and why it pays to know early

A hotel does not buy one top: it buys dozens, and they should all resemble one another. This is where natural stone behaves differently from any other specified material.

Slabs from the same block resemble each other; slabs sharing a commercial name but taken from different blocks may not resemble each other at all. For a hotel project that means the material has to be committed in full at the start, on the block, rather than bought as the supply proceeds. A bathroom redone two years later in "the same marble" will not be the same marble. How a slab is looked at and approved, and why a sample has limits, is in the guide to picking a slab; who the offcuts belong to, which on a large project is not a small quantity, in the guide to leftover stone.

The lines to put in the specification

• who carries out the survey, and the date the carcasses will be fitted and measurable;
• where delivery ends: kerbside, to the floor, or to the floor with fitting;
• who surveys the access route — doors, lift, stairs — and before which trade;
• who supplies and who fits the supports for overhangs, and what condition the carcasses must be in;
• how many people are needed to handle each piece, and with what equipment;
• whether the material is committed on the block, and how much reserve material is set aside for the property.

How we work

We choose the block and work the stone in house, and for a project that changes two concrete things. The first is that the material is committed at the start, on the block, and the slabs for one supply come from there. The second is that the drawing stays ours: a piece can be remade years later to the same dimensions, because the dimensions are in house and not somewhere along a chain of suppliers.

We do not use resin to stiffen the stone: where the surface is wide the correct answer is a bearing, and the mesh on the back of the slab is already good support. It is the same principle we apply to overhangs and cutouts: decided on the drawing, before the slab goes into the machine.

For a project supply the route is the Contract section, and contact reaches the people who run the work. Our tables show how we work when the piece is a single one.

Frequently asked questions

Who supplies a hotel's stone tops: the stone shop or the furniture supplier?

Both, and the boundary has to be written down. The stone shop surveys, cuts and delivers; the joiner or the main contractor builds the carcasses and often fits. What matters is not who issues the invoice, but who carries out the survey, who takes the piece to the floor, and what condition the carcasses must be in when the top is laid.

When should stone tops be surveyed?

On finished carcasses in position, not on the drawing: stone does not adjust on site the way a panel does. The programme needs an explicit date, namely the day the carcasses are fitted and measurable; from there to the delivered top runs the fabrication time, which is machine time and does not compress.

Who answers if a slab breaks on site?

It depends where it breaks. In transit what counts is the reservation written at unloading: a delivery note signed without reservations closes the matter. During fitting it turns on two verifiable facts, whether the base was flat and rigid as required and whether the piece could be handled by the people planned for. After fitting you are back at the design: overhangs, cutouts and bearings.

Are all the slabs in a hotel the same?

Only if they come from the same block. Slabs sharing a commercial name but taken from different blocks can differ considerably. For a project the material has to be committed in full at the start, on the block: a bathroom redone two years later in “the same marble” will not be the same marble.

Does the access route need surveying before cutting?

Yes, and it is the check most often missing. The route from the lorry to the room passes through doors, lifts and stairs: a top that will not go into the lift is solved with one more joint, and the joint is decided on the drawing. Finding out on delivery means cutting the slab on site.

The contract division Ask for a quotation

This page describes the practice of a contract supply and the boundary between the roles of the different parties; it quotes no prices, no fabrication times and no company case studies. Liability for damage depends on the contract actually entered into, on how it is characterised and on the delivery documentation: the points here are practical suggestions for writing a better specification, not a legal reconstruction of an individual case, and they are not a substitute for legal advice. On carrier liability and the reservation to be written on the delivery note, see the guide to stone top delivery and fitting.