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Civil Engineering & Construction vocabulary · Contracts and Payments

Contractor

Meaning in civil engineering & construction, with examples

/ˈkɑːntræktər/nounCore term

In civil engineering & construction, contractor means: A company or person that agrees, under a contract, to carry out construction work for a client for an agreed price and within an agreed time.

In Turkish: yüklenici, müteahhit

How it is used

The main contractor (general contractor in the US) runs the whole site and hires subcontractors. In contracts the word often starts with a capital letter: 'the Contractor shall...'.

Example sentences

  1. The contractor has asked for two more weeks to finish the facade.

  2. We were the main contractor on the hospital project, with about forty subcontractors.

Common collocations

  • main contractor
  • general contractor
  • appoint a contractor
  • contractor's obligations
  • design-and-build contractor
  • subcontractorA company hired by the main contractor, not by the client, to do one part of the work, such as piling, steelwork, electrical installation or plastering.
  • clientThe person or organisation that orders and pays for a construction project. Many standard contracts call the client the Employer or the Owner.
  • tenderA formal offer from a contractor to carry out a project for a stated price, or the competitive process in which a client invites such offers.
  • variation orderA formal written instruction from the client or engineer that changes the work in the contract, for example by adding, removing or altering an item.
  • progress paymentA payment made to the contractor during the project, usually every month, for the value of work completed so far, minus retention and earlier payments.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Contracts and Payments

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