General Conditions Documentation Guide for Contractors

• →General conditions are project-level operational requirements that make restoration or insurance-related construction runnable — they are not the same as the direct repair activities that restore a damaged assembly.
• →Direct repair is the work on the damaged component: tear-out, drying, roofing, electrical, drywall, flooring, paint. General conditions are the surrounding operational layer: supervision, coordination, temporary protection, logistics, temporary facilities, and the time those activities occupy.
• →Speak in contractor language: what the site required to mobilize, protect, sequence trades, move materials, and stay on the job — not a universal list of insurance-payable items.
• →Do not treat general conditions as automatic on every claim. A short single-trade visit may have little project-level operational record to keep. A multi-week, multi-trade, occupied, or commercial file often has more.
• →This guide documents activities that actually occurred. It does not decide coverage, entitlement, or what any policy must pay.

Keep general conditions and direct repair scope in separate documentation tracks so the same activity is not described twice as both a finish line and a project-level charge.

• →Record project size and footprint: single room, whole dwelling, multi-unit, multi-building, or campus. Size changes how much coordination, protection, and logistics the file should show.
• →Record project duration: start date, expected phases, and actual calendar. Duration is a documentation variable, not a coverage conclusion.
• →Record occupancy: vacant, owner-occupied, tenant-occupied, after-hours only, or mixed. Occupied work creates different supervision, protection, and access records than vacant work.
• →Record the number of trades and whether they overlap: mitigation, demolition, roofing, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, drywall, flooring, painting, and specialty trades.
• →Record site constraints and access: tight lots, limited staging, restricted parking, elevator rules, loading docks, and path-of-travel protection.
• →Record safety, temporary protection, and project-coordination requirements that actually applied — then write what you observed, not a copied conditions paragraph from another job.
• →Commercial and multifamily complexity, sequencing, and logistics belong on this checklist only when they existed on this project.

Documentation should reflect actual project conditions. A boilerplate general-conditions narrative that could apply to any job is a common credibility failure.

• →Document supervision only where supervision actually occurred. Do not imply that a supervision record automatically supports a particular charge.
• →Keep project logs with date, person or role on site, areas visited, and decisions made that day.
• →Record scheduling activity: trade start dates, hold points, inspection windows, and changes to the plan.
• →Record trade coordination performed by the supervisor: who was sequenced, what conflict was resolved, and which area was affected.
• →Keep site-meeting notes when meetings happened — attendees, topics, and follow-ups — rather than a generic “weekly meeting” claim without dates.
• →Maintain progress records and daily documentation that show the job moving through phases, not a single end-of-job summary.
• →Tie supervision records to project duration so reviewers can see when oversight was active and when it was not.

Supervision documentation is a record of activity. It is not a coverage argument and it is not a substitute for O&P qualification evidence.

• →Multi-trade restoration creates coordination requirements when trades must share access, wait on predecessors, or protect each other’s work. Document the coordination that occurred — not a theoretical trade list.
• →Walk the actual sequence among mitigation, demolition, roofing, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, drywall, flooring, painting, and specialty trades when those trades were on this job.
• →Record who was on site, which area they occupied, what they waited on, and what they handed off. Meeting notes and daily reports beat a narrative written after closeout.
• →Photograph or note protection and access changes that exist only because another trade is working — for example, floor protection while roofing is open, or isolation while mitigation equipment is running.
• →Keep subcontractor records and schedules aligned to the same area IDs as photos and the estimate.
• →If the question is whether required trades are missing from the estimate, use the Scope Audit Guide and Missing Line Item Documentation Guide. This checklist documents coordination activity that occurred, not omitted-repair exhibits.

Trade sequencing used to find omitted work is a different task from documenting coordination that already happened. Keep those files labeled separately.

• →Document legitimate project-protection activities that actually occurred: containment, temporary coverings, protection of unaffected areas, weather protection, and access-path protection.
• →Photograph protection in place — overview and detail — with date and location labels before it is removed.
• →Note when protection was installed, why site conditions required it, how long it remained, and when it was removed.
• →Describe activities generically and operationally. Do not present a universal list of compensable protection items.
• →Update photos if protection is maintained across multiple days; a single first-day photo understates ongoing protection.
• →Index protection records to the estimate section they support. Temporary protection that is itself omitted as a repair line still uses the Missing Line Item Documentation Guide for exhibit packaging.

• →Record restricted access: locked hours, escort requirements, occupied corridors, or limited roof and yard access.
• →Record staging constraints: where materials and debris could sit, and where they could not.
• →Record occupied-building conditions: tenant operations, after-hours windows, noise or dust limits, and protection of public or common paths.
• →Record multi-story movement: stairs, elevators, hoist rules, and floor-by-floor material handling.
• →Record loading areas, parking, and access restrictions that changed how crews and materials arrived.
• →On commercial files, record tenant considerations that affected logistics — without turning this step into a commercial-supplement playbook. Use the Commercial Insurance Claims Documentation Guide and Commercial Insurance Supplement Playbook for commercial workflow depth.
• →Photograph the constraint and write the operational effect the same day. A logistics claim without a photo or dated note is weak support.

• →Some projects require project-support infrastructure. Document only what was required on this job — not a universal facilities checklist treated as automatically payable.
• →For each facility or support item that existed, record what it was, why site conditions required it, how long it remained, and where it sat.
• →Keep supporting records: photos in place, tickets, invoices, or daily presence notes that reconcile to the same dates and location IDs.
• →Do not bundle undocumented facilities into a single unexplained lump. Reviewers cut unsupported blocks first.
• →If a facility was never used, do not document it as if it was.

• →Record start and end dates for the project and for each documented phase.
• →Record sequencing and trade schedules so duration can be understood as calendar time plus trade order — not a single unexplained total.
• →When duration changed because of documented project conditions — access limits, occupancy, weather protection, or trade holds — write the condition, the date, and the operational effect.
• →Keep daily or project logs that show presence and activity across the calendar. Gaps in the log should remain gaps; do not backfill fictional days.
• →Do not interpret delay coverage, extra-expense coverage, or policy time limits. Duration records support operational review of project-level activities.
• →If the dispute is equipment days or measured quantities, hand measurement depth to the Quantity Validation Guide. This checklist is for project-level duration of operational activities.

Duration documentation explains when project-level activities occurred. It is not an argument that a policy owes delay damages.

• →General-conditions documentation becomes more complex when the site is multifamily, HOA, retail, office, industrial, warehouse, large-loss, occupied commercial, or spread across multiple buildings and trades.
• →Index every project-level record by building, floor, suite, or zone so logistics, supervision, and protection cannot be dismissed as a single undifferentiated block.
• →Occupied commercial and multifamily files usually need access windows, tenant or property-manager notes, elevator and loading rules, and after-hours records.
• →Large-loss and multi-building files need a master location index, per-area logs, and a timeline that can be read by phase and by building.
• →Use the Commercial Insurance Supplement Playbook for commercial supplement workflow, the Commercial Insurance Claims Documentation Guide for commercial evidence standards, and the Large-Loss Commercial Insurance Claims Guide for campus and multi-building operations.
• →Property-type depth lives in the multifamily, HOA, retail/office, and industrial/warehouse guides — link those files instead of duplicating them here.

• →Assemble the records that actually exist: photographs, project logs, schedules, daily reports, invoices, receipts, subcontractor records, meeting notes, site-condition notes, correspondence, project timelines, and change documentation.
• →Prefer contemporaneous evidence. Same-day photos and logs outperform reconstructed packages after production.
• →Label every artifact with date, location ID, and the activity it supports.
• →Invoices and receipts support a documented activity only when they reconcile to logs and photos. A stack of tickets with no site context is disconnected support.
• →Do not invent records for activities that did not occur. Missing evidence stays missing until recaptured, or the activity stays off the supplement-ready list.

• →Connect project-level documentation to the estimate or scope being reviewed. The goal is traceability: Condition → Activity → Documentation → Estimate.
• →For each documented general-conditions activity, write the site condition that required it, the activity performed, the record IDs that prove it, and the estimate section or line family it supports.
• →Keep project-level rows out of the direct-repair gap list used by the Scope Audit and Missing Line Item guides, unless the same fact is being used for two different questions — then label both uses.
• →Cite the active estimate version on the index. Mixed versions make duration and activity rows untraceable after a revision.
• →When the file later enters Claim File Audit or Supplement Submission, the index should let a reviewer open the condition, the activity, and the exhibit without reconstructing the story.

• →General conditions relate to project-specific operational requirements and the records that show those activities occurred — supervision performed, protection installed, logistics constrained, facilities used, duration lived.
• →Overhead & profit is a separate estimating and business concept. It is not a second name for dumpsters, temporary protection, or daily supervision logs.
• →Do not treat general conditions and O&P as interchangeable. Do not use this file to argue O&P eligibility.
• →When the question is whether O&P belongs on a multi-trade file, leave this guide and use the O&P Qualification Documentation Standard and the O&P on Insurance Claims article.
• →If supervision or coordination records appear in both files, label the use: operational general-conditions support here; O&P qualification evidence there. Do not double-count the same hours as both without a clear file note.

Protect search-intent ownership: this guide documents project-level general conditions. The O&P Qualification Documentation Standard owns O&P eligibility documentation.

• →Avoid generic boilerplate that could be pasted onto any project. Reviewers discount language that does not name this site’s conditions.
• →Avoid unsupported assumptions — “a job this size always needs” is not documentation.
• →Do not document activities that did not occur.
• →Do not leave duration unclear: missing start/end dates, missing phases, or a single unexplained total.
• →Do not omit project logs when supervision, coordination, or protection spanned more than a single visit.
• →Do not leave a weak connection between site conditions and the activities claimed in the file.
• →Do not duplicate direct repair scope as general conditions without explaining the project-level activity.
• →Do not confuse general conditions with O&P.
• →Do not submit disconnected supporting documents — tickets, photos, or emails that cannot be mapped to a condition, activity, date, and estimate section.

• →Confirm every supplement-ready general-conditions row traces Condition → Activity → Documentation → Estimate on the current estimate version.
• →Confirm records match actual project conditions and that unused boilerplate was removed.
• →Confirm duration is dated: start, end, and phases, with logs that cover the claimed calendar.
• →Confirm supervision, coordination, protection, logistics, and facilities rows exist only where those activities occurred.
• →Confirm general conditions are not being used as a stand-in for O&P, and that O&P questions are routed to the O&P Qualification Documentation Standard.
• →Confirm direct-repair omissions are not mixed into this packet without a label pointing to the Missing Line Item Documentation Guide.
• →Confirm photos, logs, invoices, and correspondence share location IDs and dates.
• →Route only QC-passed packets to Claim File Audit and Supplement Submission. Send weak rows back to the field for recapture.