essential (esp. BrE), necessary
usual (esp. BrE)
After the usual preliminaries the meeting began.

as a preliminary
The two presidents met today, as a preliminary to resuming the peace talks.

preliminary to
an essential preliminary to serious research

without preliminaries
She began speaking intensely, without preliminaries.

Preliminary is used with these nouns:
approval, conclusion, conference, data, design, discussion, draft, drawing, enquiry, estimate, evaluation, examination, experiment, finding, hearing, indication, injunction, inspection, investigation, meeting, observation, phase, reconnaissance, remark, report, result, round, ruling, sketch, stage, step, study, talk, test, training, version, work