General requirements

Division 01 is the first division of CSI MasterFormat and it applies to every other division. It is where the project states how submittals are processed, how often progress meetings occur, what the closeout package must contain, who provides testing, and what the site rules are for parking, working hours, and noise.

Bidders skip it, and skipping it is expensive. Division 01 routinely contains obligations with genuine cost attached: as-built drawings, extended warranties, commissioning support, third-party testing, mock-ups, and attendance requirements that consume a project manager's week.

Because those obligations sit in a division nobody prices directly, they are a classic silent gap. Each trade assumes the general contractor covers them, the general contractor assumes each trade priced its own section, and the work has no home in the estimate. Asking bidders to confirm Division 01 compliance in writing is one of the cheapest gap checks available.

Keep it distinct from general conditions. Division 01 is what must be done; general conditions are what it costs the general contractor to run the job. The similarity of the names causes more confusion than almost any other pair in construction vocabulary.