General Conditions Costs: What They Are and How to Estimate Them

PRICING · 2026-06-29

General conditions are the costs of running a jobsite that are not tied to any single trade. Here is how to price them correctly.

General conditions are the costs of running a jobsite that aren't tied to any single trade's material or labor — and they're easy to underprice because they don't show up in a takeoff the way lumber or drywall does.

Common line items

Common general conditions line items include a superintendent's time, temporary toilets, dumpsters, temporary power and water, jobsite signage, safety equipment, and site security — each of these is typically priced by duration (weekly or monthly rate) rather than by a quantity takeoff, since they scale with how long the job runs, not with square footage.

Duration drives cost

Duration-based pricing means schedule accuracy directly affects general conditions cost — a job that runs longer than planned doesn't just delay revenue, it accrues additional weeks of superintendent time, toilet rental, and dumpster service that weren't in the original estimate.

Recurring vs. one-time costs

Recurring vs. one-time costs should be tracked separately in a bid — a temporary toilet rental that recurs monthly behaves very differently in a budget than a one-time delivery fee, and lumping them together makes it harder to catch a schedule overrun's cost impact as it happens.

Why this matters for draw schedules

General conditions costs are often billed progressively across a project's duration (a portion each draw period) rather than tied to a specific completed scope of work — worth structuring clearly in a draw schedule so it's distinguishable from trade-specific progress billing.