General Contracting Companies in Virginia

Short answer: Exchange lists 19 general contractor companies in Virginia. The DPOR Board for Contractors licenses firms in three classes: Class C for contracts over $1,000 and under $30,000, Class B from $30,000 to under $150,000, and Class A at $150,000 or more. A mechanics lien memorandum is due within 90 days after the end of the month of last work and cannot reach back more than 150 days. Recovery Fund claims are capped at $30,000.

Licence authority

The Board for Contractors, within the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR), issues Class A, B and C contractor licenses with building classifications for commercial and residential work.

Class thresholds

Class C covers single contracts over $1,000 and under $30,000, Class B covers $30,000 to under $150,000, and Class A covers $150,000 or more, under limits raised on July 1, 2025.

Lien deadline

A memorandum of mechanics lien is filed within 90 days from the last day of the month of last work, and never later than 90 days after completion or termination of the work.

Payment rule

On private non-residential contracts over $500,000, owners pay the general contractor within 60 days of invoice and contractors pay subcontractors within the earlier of 60 days or seven days after being paid.

Code regime

The 2021 Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code took effect January 18, 2024, is adopted by the state and is enforced by each local building department.

Recovery Fund

The Virginia Contractor Transaction Recovery Fund pays up to $30,000 per residential claim and up to $100,000 against one contractor in a biennium, after a court judgment.

Do general contractors need a license in Virginia?

Yes, a general contractor in Virginia needs a license from the Board for Contractors at the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation for any single contract over $1,000, issued as Class A, Class B or Class C according to contract value.

The class is set by money, not by trade. Under section 54.1-1100 of the Code of Virginia, a Class C contractor performs or manages work where a single contract or project is over $1,000 but less than $30,000, or where the total undertaken in any 12-month period is less than $250,000. Class B covers single contracts of $30,000 or more but less than $150,000, or 12-month totals of $250,000 or more but less than $1 million. Class A applies once a single contract reaches $150,000 or the 12-month total reaches $1 million, and it has no upper limit. These figures are recent: the General Assembly raised the class limits with effect from July 1, 2025, so older guides quoting lower thresholds are out of date.

On top of the class, each license carries one or more classifications. The two that matter for general contracting are Commercial Building Contractors (CBC), covering commercial, industrial, institutional and governmental buildings, and Residential Building Contractors (RBC), covering dwellings, townhouses and their accessory structures. Highway/Heavy (H/H) is a separate classification for bridges, dams, drainage and similar civil work. The regulations state that the CBC and RBC classifications do not provide for electrical, plumbing, HVAC or gas fitting services, so a building contractor either holds those classifications as well or subcontracts that work to firms that do. Contracting or bidding without the required license is a Class 1 misdemeanor, and the statute also allows a penalty of up to $500 for each day of violation.

What does a firm need to qualify for a Class A or Class B contractor license in Virginia?

A Virginia Class A license requires the firm to verify a net worth of $45,000 and name a qualified individual with five years of experience, while Class B requires $15,000 and three years, and both need a designated employee who passes the exam.

Virginia licenses the firm, then ties it to named people. The designated employee is defined in statute as a full-time employee or a member of responsible management, at least 18 years old, who has passed the Board examination on behalf of the contractor. The qualified individual is the person whose hands-on experience supports a particular classification, such as CBC or RBC. Class C firms name a qualified individual with at least one year of experience under the regulation as amended effective September 1, 2025; because the rule changed recently, check the current text before relying on an older checklist.

Class A and Class B applicants that cannot or prefer not to verify net worth can instead obtain and maintain a $50,000 surety bond. All applicants complete eight hours of Board-approved pre-license education, a basic business course covering the statutes and regulations rather than trade skills. If the designated employee leaves, the statute gives the contractor 90 days to name a replacement to the Board. For an owner or developer vetting a bidder, the practical check is DPOR License Lookup: confirm the firm name matches the contract, the class covers the contract value, and the classification covers the type of building.

Which licenses, permits and registrations apply in Virginia?

What must a residential construction contract include in Virginia?

A residential contract in Virginia must be written, signed and delivered before work starts, and Board for Contractors regulation 18VAC50-22-260 lists what it contains, including start and estimated completion dates, the down payment, the license number and class, and cancellation rights.

The same regulation calls for a statement of total cost or, for cost-plus work, the type of cost-plus arrangement, the fee or percentage and a cap. It requires the amounts and schedule of progress payments, a list of specified materials and work, a plain-language clause covering events beyond the contractor's control, an assurance that the contractor will comply with local permit, inspection and zoning requirements, a statement that any modification changing cost, materials, work or completion date must be in writing and signed by all parties, and a notice that the Virginia Contractor Transaction Recovery Fund exists. The consumer also signs an acknowledgment of having received the Department's statement of protection. Virginia does not set a statutory cap on deposits in this regulation; DPOR's consumer guidance suggests an initial down payment of roughly 10 per cent, or roughly 30 per cent where custom-made items are ordered.

The Recovery Fund is the backstop when a licensed contractor's improper or dishonest conduct leaves a homeowner with an unpaid court judgment. Since July 1, 2025 the maximum payment on a single claim is $30,000, up from $20,000, and total payments against one contractor in a biennium are limited to $100,000, up from $40,000. It is a last resort: the claimant first obtains a final judgment in a Virginia court, attempts debtor interrogatories to find assets, and then files a verified claim no later than 12 months after the judgment is final. The contract must have involved the claimant's own residence, so commercial owners, developers, vendors and other contractors are outside the Fund.

How long does a contractor have to file a mechanics lien in Virginia?

In Virginia a general contractor files a memorandum of mechanics lien within 90 days from the last day of the month in which it last performed work, and in no event later than 90 days after the project is completed or terminated.

Virginia adds a second limit that catches contractors on long jobs. Under section 43-4, a memorandum cannot include sums due for labor or materials furnished more than 150 days before the last day on which the claimant performed labor or furnished material. A contractor that lets several unpaid pay applications build up and files once at the end can find the oldest amounts outside the lien. The statute carves out retainage: sums withheld as retainage can be included whenever the work was done, up to 10 per cent of the total contract price. Because of the 150-day rule, a contractor with a slow-paying owner may need to file more than one memorandum over the life of a project.

Filing is not the end of it. Section 43-17 requires a suit to enforce the lien within six months from the time the memorandum was recorded, or 60 days from completion or termination of the work, whichever is later. On one- and two-family dwellings there is an earlier step: where the building permit names a mechanics lien agent, those performing labor or furnishing materials give that agent notice within 30 days of first doing so, and a late notice limits the lien to work performed after it is given. The dates and required contents of a memorandum are worth checking against the current statute or with counsel before filing.

When does payment fall due on private and public construction projects in Virginia?

On Virginia private projects over $500,000 that are not single-family residential, the owner pays the general contractor within 60 days of receiving an invoice, and the contractor pays subcontractors within the earlier of 60 days or seven days after being paid.

Those terms come from section 11-4.6 of the Code of Virginia. An owner that withholds payment notifies the general contractor in writing within 45 days of the invoice, stating the contractual noncompliance and the dollar amount held; a contractor withholding from a subcontractor has 50 days to give the equivalent notice. Late payment carries interest penalties, and retainage clauses remain permitted in both the prime contract and the subcontracts. The practical point for a general contractor is that the subcontractor clock has a 60-day outer limit measured from the subcontractor's invoice, so read the section and the subcontract together when an owner is paying late.

Public work runs under the Virginia Public Procurement Act. A prime contractor on a non-transportation public construction contract exceeding $500,000 furnishes performance and payment bonds in the sum of the contract amount, and the threshold for state-funded transportation-related projects is $350,000. Retainage on public contracts with progress payments is limited to five per cent, so the contractor is paid at least 95 per cent of the earned sum when due. The Act's payment clause has the contractor pay each subcontractor its share within seven days after receiving payment from the agency or locality, with interest at one per cent per month afterwards unless the contract provides otherwise, and it states that payment from the public body is not a condition precedent to paying lower tiers.

Which building code and permit rules apply to construction in Virginia?

Construction in Virginia is governed by the Uniform Statewide Building Code, a single state code adopted by the Board of Housing and Community Development and enforced by each city or county building department, with the 2021 edition effective since January 18, 2024.

The statewide model matters to general contractors working across several localities. The technical requirements are the same in Fairfax County, Richmond and Virginia Beach because localities enforce the state code rather than writing their own, although permit fees, submission portals, plan review times and inspection scheduling differ from one building department to the next. The Department of Housing and Community Development states that the 2021 edition is based on the 2021 I-codes together with the 2020 National Electrical Code. DHCD runs a recurring code development cycle, so confirm the edition in force with the local building official at the time of permit application.

Section 36-105 of the Code of Virginia makes the local building department responsible for enforcement on construction and rehabilitation, and provides that a building is not deemed in compliance until approved by the inspecting authority. A party who disagrees with a code decision appeals first to the local board of Building Code appeals and then to the State Building Code Technical Review Board. Licensing and the code also meet at the permit counter: the owner-builder and other exemptions in the contractor statute do not exempt anyone from the building code, and residential contracts carry the contractor's assurance that local permit, inspection and zoning requirements will be met.

How do data centers, federal work and coastal flooding affect general contracting in Virginia?

Virginia general contractors work in a market shaped by the world's largest concentration of data centers in Northern Virginia, heavy federal and defense spending, and coastal flood exposure in Hampton Roads that affects foundations, elevations and schedules.

The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission reported in 2024 that Northern Virginia holds 13 per cent of reported global data center operational capacity and 25 per cent of capacity in the Americas. It found that most of the industry's economic benefit comes from construction rather than operation, that a typical data center building takes 12 to 18 months to build, and that about 1,500 workers are on site at peak. For commercial contractors that means sustained competition for electrical and mechanical subcontractors, long lead times on switchgear and generators, and schedules driven by utility power delivery as much as by the building itself. Federal work brings its own rules: the contractor statute exempts certain work for the armed services and work on land under federal control from state licensing, and federal contracts follow federal procurement and bonding law, not the Virginia Public Procurement Act.

On the coast, the Virginia Coastal Resilience Master Plan projects that buildings exposed to extreme coastal flooding will rise from about 140,000 to 340,000 between 2020 and 2080, and that residents in homes exposed to major coastal flooding will grow from roughly 360,000 to 943,000. For work in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Hampton and the surrounding tidal localities, flood zone status, required floor elevation, flood-resistant materials below that elevation and wind design all need settling at the estimating stage, since they change foundation type and cost. Atlantic tropical systems and nor'easters also interrupt site work, so coastal contracts commonly address weather delay, site protection and securing of materials before a named storm.

Where can I verify a license and check the source in Virginia?

Every figure and rule on this page can be checked against the primary source. These are the offices that publish them. Confirm current requirements directly before you rely on any of them:

Board for Contractors, Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation; Code of Virginia section 54.1-1100, Definitions (contractor classes), Virginia Law; Contractor Transaction Recovery Fund, Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation; Code of Virginia section 43-4, Perfection of lien by general contractor, Virginia Law; Code of Virginia section 11-4.6, Payment clauses in construction contracts, Virginia Law; Building Codes and Regulations, Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development.

Nearby regions and related trades

General Contracting contractors in other regions: Alabama, Alberta, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin.

Other trades in Virginia: HVAC, Mechanical, Renovation & Remodeling, Roofing & Waterproofing.

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