GC: General Contractor. Term used to describe a person whose responsibility is to manage and deliver on a building contract of some sort, be it an add-on Deck or a Sky Scraper. In my case it usually means a person who is marginally capable of delivering the building I want, for the price I’m willing to pay, on a schedule that… uh, let’s not talk about ‘schedule’. GC’s come in three forms.
Capable of managing a project where there are several sub-contractors (you know, the guys who do the work) and delivering an acceptable product in an acceptable amount of time and for, uh, well, we won’t talk about money…
A very good carpenter who wants a higher percentage of the project’s revenue than he gets as the ‘Carpenter’ sub-contractor and thinks he can manage other people and their schedules. In my 40 years of Engineering I saw many very capable Engineers convince themselves that they could “move up in the ranks” if they entered “Management”. Few of them were good at people/schedule/budget management. Most became lackeys for incompetent upper management. This is sort of what happens when a very good carpenter tries and doesn’t do so well as a GC.
Uh, this would be the incompetent or unscrupulous person who may be convinced they can make a ‘go’ of General Contracting and only succeed at the expense of others. This person isn’t worthy of discussion…
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