Do General Contractors Actually Do Any of the Work Themselves?

Most general contractors do very little physical work themselves. The typical residential builder subcontracts around 84% of construction costs and uses 24 different trade contractors to build a single home, according to NAHB research. The GC's job is coordination, client management, and commercial control - not lifting, fixing, or finishing. The trades do the physical work; the contractor manages the project.

This is the part that surprises people when they first encounter construction arbitrage: the idea of winning a construction job and subbing out the labour is not a workaround. It is how the industry has always worked. Most GCs who have been running for five years or more spend the majority of their time on the phone, on site visits, and in the office - not with tools in hand.

What general contractors actually do#

The GC's function is management, not construction. On any given job, the contractor is responsible for:

• Winning the work and negotiating the prime contract
• Pricing the project and protecting the margin
• Selecting, vetting, and scheduling the right tradespeople
• Coordinating deliveries so materials arrive when the trade needs them
• Keeping the client updated and handling complaints before they escalate
• Quality checking at key stages - not doing the work, but inspecting it
• Managing invoicing, payments to subs, and cash flow across the project

None of that involves a hammer. It is a business management role. The plumber, electrician, tiler, plasterer, roofer - each one is a specialist brought in because they are faster and better at that specific trade than a generalist GC could ever be. The GC's edge is coordination and commercial management.

The numbers: how much do GCs actually subcontract?#

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) surveyed US residential builders and found that the average new home uses 24 different subcontractors. Builders subcontract out around 84% of construction costs in the typical home they build.

Over 90% of builders reported that they always subcontract: concrete flatwork, masonry, drywall, foundations, plumbing, electrical wiring, HVAC, carpeting and security systems. These are not edge cases - they are the core of what gets built.

Even among larger commercial operators, fewer than half of general and prime contractors self-perform more than 20% of their construction work, according to data from the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA). The majority do less than 20% themselves. On large commercial projects - office blocks, retail fits, industrial builds - the GC is almost always a project management operation supported by a stack of specialist subs.

Where some GCs do pick up tools#

There are two situations where a GC might do some physical work themselves.

Small operations, early on. A sole trader who is also a tradesman - say a carpenter who grew into running jobs - will often still do some work with their own hands on smaller projects. They might frame, fit, or finish while managing the sub-stack around them. This is common at the very small end of the market. As the volume grows, the founder typically steps off the tools because the business needs their time more than it needs their labour.

Site supervision overlap. On smaller domestic jobs, the GC or their site manager might do small items directly - a bit of clearing, minor repairs, punch list snags - because it is faster than calling a sub for a 15-minute task. This is pragmatic, not structural. It is not a trade role; it is a site manager filling a gap.

The pattern is consistent: the smaller the operation and the earlier in its history, the more likely the owner is to be doing some physical work. The larger and more systemised the business, the less they touch it.

Why this matters if you are considering the model#

I started out doing work with my own hands. The first jobs, I was there. Changed washers, fixed leaks, handled the bits I could while I found the trades for the rest. Then I started using a plumber because the plumber was faster - not because I could not do it, but because an hour on the phone finding the next job was worth more than an hour under a sink.

The trade was something I chose to put down, not something I never had. That distinction matters: the skill of knowing what good work looks like does not require doing the work every day. You learn it by watching, checking, and questioning - and by working with trades long enough to know when something is not right.

The real progression is: solo work, then one or two day-rate people, then subcontractors for specific trades, then a full sub-stack and yourself out of the physical work entirely. Every step answers the question "how do I stop having to be there?" and every answer creates the next problem to solve.

By the time I had 1,400+ subcontractors in the database, I was running jobs across multiple locations without being on site for any of them. Not because GCs do not do the work - some do - but because the business model rewards management over manual labour, and systematising that is exactly what construction arbitrage is.

The construction arbitrage model is the formalised version of this#

Most general contractors already operate a version of construction arbitrage without calling it that. They win prime contracts. They build a trade sub-stack. They keep the spread between the client price and the sub cost. They manage delivery from a commercial and coordination layer, not from the tools.

Construction arbitrage is just the name for building that model deliberately - as a system, from the start - rather than growing into it after years of solo work. You set up the sub database, the quoting process, the client pipeline, and the delivery management before you take your first job, not after your tenth.

The question "do general contractors actually do any of the work themselves?" has a clean answer: most do not, and the ones who do are either small, early, or choosing to for specific reasons. The model has always rewarded coordination over labour. The trades are always better at the physical work than a generalist could be. The margin is in managing the project, not picking up a tool.

If you want to understand the full model - how the spread works, what the compliance requirements are, and how to build it from scratch - start with how construction arbitrage works and the detail on what you need to start.

For the question of whether you even need a contractor licence if you are subbing everything out, the answer is covered in full in do you need a contractor licence for construction arbitrage.

The GC model has always been about managing projects, not building them. Most contractors figured that out years in. Construction arbitrage is just starting with that conclusion already reached.

The next step#

If you are building this model from scratch, the room where real operators are doing it is Construction Arbitrage Players on Skool - join at skool.com/construction-arbitrage/about.

The full system - how to set up the sub database, price the spread, and run jobs without being on site - is documented in THE FAMILY SECRET - How Construction Arbitrage Really Works, coming soon.