Construction glossary · Estimating Concepts

What are general conditions in construction?

General conditions in construction are the project-specific costs a contractor incurs to run a job, such as the superintendent, jobsite trailer, temporary utilities, safety, and cleanup, that support the work but never become part of the finished building. They are priced as their own section of the estimate, mostly as time-based costs tied to the project schedule, and billed as line items on the schedule of values.

Book a walkthrough Get a Free Takeoff

Free 30-minute walkthrough on your own drawings. No card.

Updated November 2026 · Reviewed by the Ruh construction team

GCs = project run costTypical ~5-10% of costIncludes super, trailer, temp utilities

Estimating Concepts

The definition

Two meanings of general conditions

The same words also name a contract document, the general conditions of the contract, which sets out each party's rights and duties. On US commercial jobs that document is often AIA A201.

How it is measured

Estimate general conditions from the schedule, not the drawings. List each item, decide if it is time-based, one-time or tied to the work, and price it on a general conditions worksheet.

What do general conditions include?

General conditions include everything a general contractor spends to staff, house, power and protect a job, but nothing that gets built into it. The usual groups are:

Group	Typical items
Project staff	Superintendent, project manager, project engineer, field admin, project accounting
Temporary facilities	Jobsite trailer, storage, portable toilets, fencing, signage
Temporary utilities	Power, water, heat, internet and phones for the site
Site services	Dumpsters and hauling, ongoing and final cleanup, site security, small tools
Safety	Safety supplies, barricades, first aid, site safety staff
Permits and fees	Permits and inspection fees the contract puts on the contractor
Insurance and bonds	Builder's risk, general liability, performance and payment bonds, when the GC carries them in this section

Owners and lenders look hard at this section because none of it is installed work. Which items sit here, and which sit in a trade or in the fee, changes from one contractor to the next, so state your list on the bid.

General conditions vs general requirements

General requirements are Division 01 of the project specifications: the written rules for how the job is run, such as submittals, temporary facilities, quality control and closeout. General conditions means one of two things: the contract's legal terms, often AIA A201, or the cost section of the estimate that pays for running the job. Put simply, general requirements say what the contractor must do, and general conditions costs are what it spends to do it.

AIA A201-2017, General Conditions of the Contract for Construction, has 15 articles, from General Provisions to Claims and Disputes, according to the document's own table of articles.

	General conditions (contract)	General conditions (costs)	General requirements
What it is	The legal terms of the contract	The estimate section for running the job	Division 01 of the specifications
Where you find it	Contract documents, often AIA A201 plus supplementary conditions	The contractor's estimate and the schedule of values	The project manual, Division 01 of CSI MasterFormat
What it covers	Roles, time, payment, insurance and bonds, claims and disputes	Staff, trailer, temporary utilities, cleanup, safety	Submittals, temporary facilities, quality, closeout
Who writes it	The owner, usually from a standard form	The contractor's estimator	The architect or specifier

The words get mixed up because many estimators call the whole cost section "general conditions", or "GCs and GRs", even when the items come from Division 01. When you read a bid or a contract, check which meaning is in play and which items each contractor put in that section.

How to estimate general conditions

1. Start with duration. Take the months on site from the schedule, for the whole job and for each role.

2. Price the time-based items. A loaded monthly rate for each staff role times its months on site, plus monthly rentals for the trailer, toilets and dumpsters, and monthly bills for power, water and internet.

3. Add the one-time items. Mobilization, trailer setup and removal, project signage.

4. Add the items tied to the work. Final cleaning priced per square foot, dumpster hauls priced per load.

5. Read the contract and Division 01. Owners often require extras here, such as an office for the architect, progress photos or a full-time safety lead.

6. Check it against past jobs. Compare the total with your own past jobs as a share of contract value.

7. Rebuild it when the schedule moves. Duration is the biggest input. A job that runs 14 months instead of 10 carries 40 percent more in time-based costs, and a flat percentage won't catch that.

The result goes into the estimate as its own section and later onto the schedule of values.

Fixed vs variable general conditions

Fixed items cost the same however long the job runs, such as signage and mobilization. Variable items grow with time, such as trailer rental, staff and temporary utilities. A 2018 Ogletree Deakins article draws the same line, and it is why a delay hits general conditions first.

How general conditions are priced in a contract

Owners and contractors usually settle general conditions in one of three ways: a lump sum, often billed in equal monthly amounts, a percentage of the construction cost, or actual cost on a cost-plus contract. A 2018 Ogletree Deakins article describes billing "either as a percentage of the direct job costs or in proportion to the construction schedule". A 2023 draft best-practice chapter from Washington State's CPARB GC/CM committee says specified general conditions could be bid as either a monthly fixed not-to-exceed amount or a fixed percentage of the construction cost.

What percentage of a project are general conditions?

General conditions run about 6 to 12 percent on typical commercial jobs, according to a 2018 Ogletree Deakins article. Use that only as a check. A long, low-value job sits higher, and a short, high-value job sits lower. Your own past jobs are the better guide.

Worked example

General conditions example: a 10-month job

Illustrative numbers for a 10-month commercial job. Superintendent at a loaded cost of $12,000 per month: $12,000 x 10 months = $120,000. Jobsite trailer at $900 per month: $900 x 10 months = $9,000, plus a one-time $3,000 for delivery, setup, and removal, for $12,000 total. Temporary utilities (power, water, internet) at $1,500 per month: $1,500 x 10 months = $15,000. Total for these three items: $120,000 + $12,000 + $15,000 = $147,000, which is a run rate of $14,400 per month plus the one-time $3,000. On an illustrative $4.9 million contract, that is about 3 percent of contract value before adding dumpsters, toilets, fencing, or cleanup. The schedule sensitivity is the real lesson: if the job slips 2 months, the time-based items alone add $14,400 x 2 = $28,800 in cost with no added revenue behind it. That 3 percent covers three items only. Add staff beyond the superintendent, dumpsters, toilets, fencing, safety and cleanup before you compare it with any published range.

How Ruh handles it

How Ruh Handles General Conditions.

In Ruh AI, your estimator can change any price or add their own costs, and Ruh AI's Estimating Agent prices from your own rate book and history.

On this page: General conditions example: a 10-month job.

See Construction Estimating Software

Ruh measuring quantities off a real drawing set

Try Ruh on a real bid.

Start with a walkthrough

General Conditions: Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between general conditions and general requirements?+

General requirements are Division 01 of the specifications, the rules for how the job is run. General conditions are either the contract's legal terms, often AIA A201, or the costs the contractor spends to run the job. The requirements say what must be done, and the general conditions costs pay for doing it.

What percentage of project cost should general conditions be?+

About 6 to 12 percent on typical commercial jobs, according to a 2018 Ogletree Deakins article. There's no correct figure, because duration and staffing drive the cost, not contract value. Build the number from the schedule, then check it against your own past jobs.

Are general conditions the same as overhead and profit?+

No. General conditions are project-specific costs billed through the schedule of values on that job. Home-office overhead (rent, accounting, business development) and profit are recovered through the markup or fee applied on top of general conditions and direct costs. Lumping them together usually means one of them is underpriced.

What is included in general conditions costs?+

Project staff such as the superintendent and project manager, the jobsite trailer, temporary power and water, toilets, fencing, dumpsters, safety and cleanup. Some contractors also carry permits, insurance and bonds here. Anything that becomes part of the finished building is not a general condition.

Are general conditions hard costs or soft costs?+

Usually hard costs, because they sit inside the construction contract, even though estimators treat them as indirect costs. See hard costs vs soft costs.

What is AIA A201?+

AIA A201 is the American Institute of Architects' standard General Conditions of the Contract for Construction. It sets the rights and duties of the owner, contractor and architect, covering time, payment, insurance and bonds, and claims and disputes. Many owners edit it with supplementary conditions.

Who pays for general conditions?+

The owner, through the contract price. On a lump-sum contract they are built into the price. On a cost-plus contract the contractor bills them as cost, or as an agreed fixed amount, and the owner can audit them.

Still measuring by hand? Your next takeoff can run while you review this one.

See it on your plans

Keep going: General conditions example: a 10-month job, read the full guide or explore Construction Estimating Software, estimating for general contractors.

The Construction Estimating Cheat Sheet

Every unit, waste factor, and conversion on one page. Free PDF.

Figures on this page are illustrative. Construction estimates depend on project-specific conditions, source documents, market pricing, and professional judgment. Ruh's AI assists the estimator and does not replace professional review: your team reviews, validates, and approves every estimate, bid, and pricing decision.

Now run it on your job

Knowing what general conditions means is the easy half.

The number you actually need is the one from your own drawings. These two are free, take no signup, and give you something you can put straight into a bid.

Markup and MarginThe two are not the same number Cost per Square FootYour area against your rate

Try Ruh on a Bid You Are Pricing Now.

Put us on real work rather than a canned demo. Ruh reads your drawing set, measures the scope, and prices the quantities against your own rates, with every line traceable back to the sheet it came from.

1Tell us about a bid you are working on and the trade you are pricing
2Ruh measures that scope from your drawings and prices it on your own rates, not generic cost data
3Every quantity traces back to the sheet it was measured from, so your estimator can check the work