Learn General Contracting
Manage your own building project: a practical course for understanding, planning, and coordinating the work. For homeowners considering a renovation, an addition, a detached building or a new home, who want to understand what the work involves, what they can reasonably coordinate, and where qualified professional help is essential. Including, where permitted, acting as your own general contractor, and equally including the decision not to.
Describe your project (type, stage, intended role, budget range, timing, hours you can give, whether you will live in it). Every blue "Your project" box, the exercises and the binder tools will then speak to your project. It stays in your browser; nothing is uploaded. "I don't know yet" is a useful answer.
What this course is, and is not
It teaches the management of a building project: information, people, decisions, materials, budgets and timing. It is meant to help you build the judgment to make informed decisions and to coordinate a project well, whether a professional is managing it and you want to oversee it well, you are coordinating alongside a hired contractor, or you are weighing whether to coordinate the trades yourself.
It does not teach you to perform structural, electrical, plumbing, gas, roofing or other hazardous work. It does not give legal advice, engineering judgments or code interpretations, and it cannot tell you whether a particular owner-builder arrangement is lawful where you live. Rules and responsibilities vary by location and project; the course teaches you what to ask and which local authority or qualified professional to ask. Completing a module records only that you marked it as read and practiced. It is not a qualification and not a permission to build.
This course does not promise that acting as your own general contractor will save money. Headline savings claims are usually a builder's overhead and profit lines; those lines also buy supervision, pricing power with trades, insurance, a warranty and someone else's hours. The course explains the tradeoffs in time, responsibility, coordination, cost uncertainty, insurance and lending gaps, and access to experienced trades, so that you can decide with open eyes. Deciding to hire a general contractor and oversee the project well is a successful outcome of this course.
How each module is organized
- Understand: the concept, why it matters, and the judgment behind the decisions.
- See it: an annotated example, a diagram, a worked scenario or a carefully chosen free demonstration from an authoritative source. Fictional examples are labelled as fictional.
- Practice: a manageable exercise, usually producing something you keep in your binder.
- Your project: a blue box that applies the lesson to the project you described in setup.
- Check your work: criteria, a worked example, common mistakes, and the questions that remain unresolved.
- Knowledge check and scenario: a few questions with explanations, and a short branching decision with feedback on each path.
Ask the authority marks a question only your building department, licensing board, utility, insurer, lender, attorney or design professional can answer for your project. General marks a coordination principle that does not depend on where you are; how you apply it still does. Boundary boxes appear wherever a learner might be tempted to read more into a checklist or an observation than it can carry.
The modules
Should you manage this project?
What managing a project involves day to day, the delivery approaches you can choose, what an owner-builder takes on as official sources describe it, and a readiness exercise that supports judgment without pretending to certify it.
Define the project before pricing it
Goals, constraints, scope, exclusions, priorities and unknowns, and the difference between a wish list and a scope a stranger could price.
Understand the team and the language
Who does what, how information moves, the terms you will meet, and an introduction to reading drawings and specifications.
Feasibility and local verification
The questions about site, design, approvals, utilities, insurance, financing and professional requirements, with who answers each, so you arrive at the counter prepared.
Understand the sequence of construction
Dependencies, handoffs, inspections and lead times, through four illustrative project types instead of one supposedly universal schedule.
Build a realistic project budget
Cost categories, estimates versus commitments and payments, allowances, exclusions, contingency reasoning, and change tracking that shows uncertainty instead of hiding it.
Find trades and compare proposals
A consistent bid package, useful questions, the checks that matter, and how to level three proposals so the numbers you compare describe the same job.
Make selections and coordinate procurement
Decision deadlines, what must be verified before ordering, approval before ordering, long-lead items, deliveries, storage, damage and returns.
Coordinate the work
Look-ahead schedules, trade communication, site meetings, access in an occupied home, decision logs, documented changes, and escalation when plans conflict.
Observe, document, and ask good questions
Progress photographs, discrepancies, unresolved items, when to request professional review, and the clear line between a homeowner's observation and an inspection or acceptance.
Handle setbacks and complete the project
Delays, unavailable materials, scope changes, incomplete work, punch lists, the signoffs to ask about, manuals, warranties and handover records.
Your project rehearsal and capstone
Assemble the coordination binder and work through realistic scenarios before taking on actual responsibility, then revisit the Module 1 decision.
Your binder
Fourteen tools that together form your project coordination binder: a brief and scope worksheet, a team directory and responsibility map, a local-verification question list, a bid comparison worksheet, budget and commitment and payment and change trackers, a selection and procurement log, a dependency map with an editable look-ahead and timing assumptions, meeting notes, decision and issue logs, a progress-photo guide, a punch list and handover checklist, a glossary and a source library. Everything you type stays in your browser; the binder page exports it all as one file you keep, imports it on another device, and prints the whole binder.
Browser storage is convenient and fragile: clearing site data, private browsing, or a different device means an empty binder. Export regularly. The course says this on every tool page because it matters.
Why there is no countdown
A wedding has a date. A building project has a preferred start, a hoped-for finish, sometimes a hard constraint, and a list of prerequisites that nobody fully controls: plan review, utility connections, lead times, weather, inspections. Instead of a countdown, the schedule tool holds your own editable assumptions, derives a rough window from them, and lists the prerequisites you have not yet confirmed. Every number in it is labelled as your assumption, because that is what it is.
Common questions
Can I be my own general contractor?
In many places a homeowner may act as owner-builder on their own home under conditions that vary widely: who may pull permits, what the owner becomes responsible for, whether the home may be sold within a period afterward, and what happens if workers are hired directly. The only reliable answer is the one your building department and licensing authority give for your address and project. Module 1 explains what the role involves and Module 4 prepares you to ask.
Will managing it myself save money?
Sometimes, sometimes not, and the course does not promise either. What you give up is a contractor's supervision, trade relationships and pricing, insurance and warranty; what you take on is their hours, their risk and their coordination. Module 1 lays out the tradeoffs and Module 6 shows where cost uncertainty actually lives.
I am hiring a contractor. Is this course still for me?
Yes. Every module has a version for the informed homeowner overseeing a professionally managed project: how to define scope so it can be priced, how to compare proposals, how to read a schedule of values, what to photograph before the drywall goes up, and what a punch list and a handover should contain.
Does the course tell me what the code requires?
No. It explains what codes and inspections are, why sequences include inspection holds, and which questions to bring to the building official or a design professional. Code interpretation is their job, and the course says so at every point where it matters.
What happens to my information?
Nothing leaves your browser. There are no accounts, no analytics and no server-side storage. Your setup can be carried to another device by a link you copy, and your binder by a file you export. See the privacy statement.
Suggested path
- This week: fill in setup, read Module 1 and do the readiness exercise honestly. Then Module 2, and start your brief.
- Next: Modules 3 and 4. Build the team map and the verification list, then make the calls. The answers you record there shape everything after.
- Then: Modules 5 and 6. Map the sequence for your project type and build a first budget that shows its own uncertainty.
- Before signing anything: Module 7. Level the proposals. Take the contract questions to an adviser.
- Before and during the work: Modules 8 to 11, with the look-ahead, the logs and the photo discipline running every week.
- Before taking on real responsibility: Module 12. Rehearse with the scenarios, assemble the binder, and revisit the Module 1 decision with what you now know.