How great GCs write subcontractor scopes that survive the project. Based on conversations with more than 200 general contractors across North America.
Every habit, anti-pattern, and war story in these pages was drawn from in-depth interviews with general contractors across North America — small regional builders, mid-market commercial firms, large self-performing GCs, and ENR-Top national contractors. Industry stats from FMI, Arcadis, McKinsey, and the AGC ground the financial framing.
To protect the candor of the contributors, every contractor is identified by role and firm segment rather than by name — for example, “Estimating Manager at a Canadian ICI GC” or “Pre-Construction Lead at a Top-ENR Canadian GC.”
Nothing here constitutes legal advice. The contract-language chapter is meant to orient estimators and PMs to clauses that interact with scope; consult counsel for any specific contract drafting decision.
“It’s descriptive — bread, put it on a plate, use the open jar, use a knife, scoop out the peanut butter, spread evenly. You have to get to that level of detail or else they’ll just be like, “you didn’t tell us that.””
“You typically have a junior guy that gets given scopes of work from three other projects. He hasn’t read the drawings yet, and what he’ll do is just stuff everything in there and remove them as he goes — but he might miss a whole bunch.”
“If we could catch three scope gaps or three missed items on every scope of work, then this thing pays for itself.”
From the team at Provision