General conditions vs general requirements
What is the difference between general conditions and general requirements?
General conditions are costs; general requirements are rules. General conditions are what it costs a contractor to run the job — supervision, the trailer, temporary utilities, cleanup. General requirements are the Division 01 specification sections stating the administrative obligations of the contract: submittals, meetings, closeout, testing. One is money, the other is what must be done.
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Reviewed by Eric Collin · President and Founder of Firmo Construction, 20+ years in preconstruction and bid evaluation
Money versus obligations
General conditions are a cost category. They cover the things a project needs that no trade owns: a superintendent, a project manager's time, the site office and its power, dumpsters, fencing, safety equipment, and the final clean. They are usually priced as a monthly rate times the schedule duration.
General requirements are Division 01 of the specifications. They state how the project will be administered — how submittals are processed, how often meetings occur, what closeout requires, who pays for testing, what the site rules are.
The names are similar enough that the two get used interchangeably, and both abbreviate awkwardly. Some firms say "GCs" for general conditions and "Div 1" for general requirements, which is the clearest convention available and is not universal.
Why the confusion is expensive
Because they sound alike, a bidder can believe it has addressed one while having read neither, and both are places where cost hides.
On the general conditions side, the risk is that a proposal reading "general conditions by others" is making a claim about money — that the general contractor is providing supervision, temporary facilities, and cleanup for this trade. That may be right, but it needs confirming rather than assuming.
On the general requirements side, the risk is larger and quieter. Division 01 routinely carries real cost — as-built drawings, extended warranties, commissioning support, mock-ups, third-party testing — and because it belongs to no trade division, every bidder can reasonably assume someone else priced it. That is a scope gap that appears in almost every package where nobody asked the question.
What to ask bidders
Two separate questions, because they are two separate things.
For costs: what general conditions has this bidder carried for its own work — its own supervision, its own cleanup, its own hoisting — and what is it assuming the general contractor provides?
For obligations: has the bidder read Division 01 and priced its requirements, specifically the ones with a cost attached? Asking for written confirmation on this single point is one of the cheapest gap checks available, and the answers across a field are rarely consistent.
- General conditions
- General conditions are the project-specific costs of running a job that belong to no trade — supervision, the site office, temporary utilities, cleanup, and similar.
- General requirements
- General requirements are the Division 01 specification sections that set the administrative and procedural rules of a contract — submittals, meetings, closeout, quality control, and site conduct.
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