A general contractor supervises and manages construction and home improvement projects or remodeling home individually or making deal with an organization or person. Usually, the general contractor is considered as the builder of constructional project or deal. Most of the time, it has been seen that an individual contractor joins hands with other constructional contractors, known as sub-contractors in order to complete a project.
What Does A General Contractor Do?
Although the duties and responsibilities of a general contractor are quite vast, here you will get an overview of their typical responsibilities.
Services Offered by The General Contractors
Based on the type of service offered by the general contractor, his duties and responsibilities are decided. Some general contractors work with the custom home building projects where they focus on entire construction of new buildings. On the other hand, when a house remodeling contractor is specialized in home remodeling projects, his focus remains on home renovation and modification of older buildings. In certain cases, you may come across some construction contractors working on historic renovation.
Interaction with the Architects
Now, based on the specialized field mentioned above, the duties and responsibilities of the contractor have been broken up. For example, in case of new building construction where the architectural designs are involved, the general contractor needs to interact with them for proper implementation of the work. It is essential to thorough review of the plan done by both architect and contractor before beginning any work.
Gathering and Calculating the Bids
There should a strong network of experienced subcontractors under a general contractor so that he can collect the exact bids. He needs to accomplish the project by collecting multiple bids for plumbing, electricity and so on. In fact, the person is supposed to communicate with other subcontractors to ensure all the estimates are similar. Then he should compare and contrast the materials and techniques to determine the best quality as per the price.
Coordination with Specialty Contractors
Whether the general contractor is dealing with a new house construction or remodeling older contraction, he always needs to juggle with the busy schedules of different contractors. There are many specialty contractors involved in a project and it is the responsibility of the general contractor to make those specialty contractors compete their tasks within the right schedules.
Providing Skilled Labors
Labors are the ultimate men behind construction of a house and it is the responsibility of general contractor to provide the experienced and skilled laborers. He is required to handle their tasks so that they can end up performing their best works.
Arranging for Permits and Inspections
In order to maintain a safe community, there are certain rules of city permits. Before you build, demolish, remodel, reconstruct or convert any construction on a property, it is essential to have permits for it. Now, what does a general contractor do? He usually collects the permits before the construction work starts. Therefore, he has to be well-acquainted with the rules and regulations of the permit. In fact, general contractor license plays a great role for getting the permit.
He is also required to coordinate all the relevant inspectional tasks by meeting with the inspectors and scheduling the inspection at the constructional site.