Ten Questions to Ask Before Hiring a General Contractor

 

Most owners hire a general contractor only a handful of times in their lives. The contractor does this every day. That imbalance is exactly why the right questions matter — they close the gap between what you know and what you’re about to commit to.

A good GC won’t flinch at any of these. If a question makes someone defensive, that’s an answer in itself.

1. How do you build your estimates, and what’s included?
   

   You’re listening for rigor. A thoughtful GC can walk you through their assumptions, their allowances, and what’s specifically excluded. Vagueness here becomes a change order later.

2. What happens when something isn’t on the drawings?
   

   Every project hits gaps between what was drawn and what gets built. Ask how they handle it. The answer tells you whether surprises become conversations or invoices.

3. Who will actually be on my project?
   

   The people who win the work aren’t always the people who run it. Ask who leads the job day to day, and how experienced they are. Consistency of team matters more than the logo on the truck.

4. How will I know where my money is?
   

   You should never have to wonder. Ask how and how often you’ll see the financial picture. A GC who makes cost visible in real time is one who has nothing to hide.

5. How do you handle changes and decisions?
   

   Ask to see how they track directives, approvals, and change orders. Every change should have an owner and a paper trail. If that process is fuzzy, disputes are coming.

6. What does your preconstruction process look like?
   

   The cheapest place to solve a problem is on paper. A GC who invests in reviewing and cross-checking the documents before breaking ground is one who takes your budget seriously.

7. How do you keep the jobsite safe?
   

   Safety culture is a proxy for how a company treats people and details. Ask about their program and their record. A jobsite that protects its crew usually protects your project too.

8. Can I talk to owners you’ve built for — including a hard project?
   

   Anyone can supply a happy reference for an easy job. Ask for one that went sideways. How a GC handled the hard project tells you far more than how they handled the smooth one.

9. Have you built my kind of project before?
   

   A church, a clinic, an industrial facility, and a school each carry different demands. Experience with your building type means fewer things learned at your expense.

10. How will you communicate with me?
    

    You’ll live with this relationship for months if not years. Ask how often you’ll hear from them, who your point of contact is, and what happens when there’s bad news. The best GC brings you the bad news early, not late.

The pattern underneath the questions

Read them together and a theme emerges. Almost every question is really asking the same thing: will this GC keep me informed, tell me the truth, and keep control of the details? That’s what you’re actually hiring — not a low number, but a partner who reduces your uncertainty.

The lowest bid is rarely the answer to any of these. Neither is the flashiest pitch. The answer is the GC who treats your one-time project like it matters as much to them as it does to you — because to a GC worth hiring, it does.