ensure that local.sbt settings are applied AFTER build.sbt settings

It seems as if on some systems, the setting in local.sbt are applied first - this contradicts the idea that these setting should override the defaults... maybe we have "to call" the local.sbt from within the build.sbt... (No idea how to do that.)

In other words: how do we ensure that the local settings are always applied after the settings in build.sbt? (The doc just talks about "merging settings")