There is persistent need for GCs and CMs to distinguish and quantify the costs of GC/GRs to their clients. This is one of the hardest sells, and clients frequently cannot access the concept. GC/GRs are not always quantified scientifically, or with any degree of exactitude, and merely are assigned a value as percentage.
As an estimator, I have seen endless permutations of GC/GRs in project documentation, as there is no standard. There being no standard, I believe it is helpful to define these typically broad terms in a simplified and specific sense, lest the discussion degenerate into the ambiguity that many GCs and CMs experience.
I find that Public & Government specifications- with their tendency to be comprehensive and unambiguous – offer a fair approximation of how the terms “General Requirements” and “General Conditions” differ, and offer a basis for study or examination. Such agencies often require iteration or detailed costs of GC/GRs in the ITB (invitation to bid). This is especially so for CM contracts. Private work specifications are notoriously wanting of clarification, and are typically the most nebulous.
In the project specifications, General Requirements tend to be specific to the owner’s needs. They are often merely conveyed as boilerplate, and tend to be immutable. General Conditions too are also conveyed as boilerplate, however, prosecution is largely up to the GC or CM. General Conditions are often referred to as “whatever it takes to get the job done.”
I predicate my views that the following pertains – for the most part – to GCs and CMs, and to a lesser extent, subcontractors. It is helpful to think of General Requirements as mostly administrative, and General Conditions as both administrative, and faciliatory.
General Requirements: defines the specific protocols for administrative programs associated with a given project, and each respective trade or division (CSI), such as submittals, scheduling req’s, LEED, payment apps, permitting, inspections, daily logs, RFIs, progress meetings and meeting minutes, and all other project documentation. They may appear in Division 0, within specific divisions, or both.
General Conditions: there are two types: Administrative and Field.
Field: (mostly manual labor) those responsibilities and activities necessary to facilitate the ‘general’ overall prosecution of the work, that are NOT otherwise iterated in the scope of work, General Requirements, or SOV, to include: general labor, house-keeping, site management (superintendent), safety measures, temporary utilities, trailers, etc.
Administrative: (non-manual labor) those responsibilities and activities necessary to facilitate the overall prosecution of the work, that are NOT otherwise iterated in the scope of work, general requirements, or SOV, to include: project manager, estimator, principals, project engineers, bookkeeping, and administrative personnel.
General Requirements and General Conditions, as they pertain to Litigation:
Invariably, construction disputes tend to focus on the ‘work proper,’ and don’t consider the value of General Requirements or General Conditions toward a given claim. I believe this is owing to the general inability of GCs and CMs to accurately represent such costs with any acceptable degree of exactitude, and the owners being unaware of their intrinsic value.
In my work as an expert witness for construction damage litigation, I sometimes suggest the quantifying of the value of General Conditions and General Requirements for contract disputes, where standard of care comes into question. After all, if GC/GRs are 5-10% of the contract value, does it not behoove one to examine the true nature of such costs?
