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.
Also written as GCs, general conditions costs.
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Reviewed by Eric Collin · President and Founder of Firmo Construction, 20+ years in preconstruction and bid evaluation
They are the cost of having a project at all: a superintendent, a project manager's time, the trailer and its power, dumpsters, temporary fencing, safety equipment, small tools, and the final clean. The work is real and someone pays for it, but it belongs to no trade package and appears on no set of drawings.
That makes them a recurring source of scope gaps at the boundary. Temporary facilities are the usual example — every trade assumes temporary power and lighting exist, and whether the general contractor or a specific trade provides them is a decision that has to be made rather than assumed.
General conditions are usually priced as a monthly rate multiplied by the schedule duration, which makes them one of the few costs that moves directly with time. A schedule extension is a general conditions claim before it is anything else.
The term is routinely confused with general requirements, and the two are not the same thing. General conditions are costs; general requirements are the specification sections describing the administrative obligations of the contract. A proposal saying "general conditions by others" is talking about money; one saying "per Division 01" is talking about rules.
- General conditions vs general requirements
What is the difference between general conditions and general requirements?
- 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.
- Temporary facilities
Temporary facilities are the services and structures a site needs while it is being built — power, lighting, water, heat, sanitation, fencing, and the site office.
- Overhead and profit
Overhead and profit is the markup a contractor adds to its direct costs to cover the expense of running the business and to earn a return on the work.
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