Virginia Contractor General Portion Practice Exam
Free Practice Exam
Test your knowledge with 10 questions from our pool of 20 free questions.
- 10 questions per attempt
- 30 minute time limit
- Unlimited attempts
- A new mix each time
- Instant results
Full Practice Exam
Complete exam simulation matching the real licensing test format.
- 50 questions (same as real exam)
- 100 minute time limit
- 10 topic areas covered
- 246 questions in pool
- Detailed explanations
Texts preferred · 9am–9pm Central
Virginia Contractor General Portion Practice Exam Guide
What's on the exam
Questions per topic, out of 50The General Portion covers the business and law side of your Virginia contractor licensing exam. It does not ask you about framing or wiring. It asks whether you can price a job, sign a contract that holds up, pay your people legally, keep your books straight, file a lien on time, and run a safe site. It is open book, so the skill being tested is finding and applying a rule under time pressure — not memorizing every page.
You have two ways to practice here. The free practice exam gives you 10 questions per attempt, and you can retake it as often as you want. The full practice exam gives you 50 questions on a 100 minutes clock, drawn fresh from our question bank every time you start, so repeat attempts don't turn into memorizing answer letters. Both are built to the official content outline, topic by topic.
Business Organization 2 items
Two items, but they cover ground. Expect double taxation at the corporate and shareholder level (NASCLA Contractors Guide, Choosing Your Business Structure chapter — C Corporations section (Page 2-3)), the split between general and limited partner liability (Partnerships section (Page 2-2)), the formation document and filing fee for a Virginia LLC (Limited Liability Company (LLC) section (Page 2-4)), and the extra step of filing an attested assumed-name certificate with the Virginia Corporation Commission (Naming Your Business section (Page 2-6)). Know which entity files what.
Estimating and Bidding 10 items
Tied with Contract Management as the heaviest topic. Practice questions run labor cost as hours × rate (Bidding and Estimating chapter — Quantity Take-off section (Page 7-3)), labor burden as a percentage add-on (Labor Burden section (Page 7-4)), materials cost, equipment unit cost by annual hours (Determining Estimated Costs section (Page 7-5)), and overhead recovery by division, not addition (Calculating an Overhead Percentage section (Page 7-6)). You also separate project overhead from company overhead, read a job cost code, and tell bid shopping from bid peddling from bid rigging.
Contract Management 10 items
Tied for the heaviest topic. You need the four required elements cold (Chapter 8 (Contract Management) — Required Contract Elements), then the pricing structures: lump-sum risk, unit-price for unknown quantities, cost-plus markup. Progress payments, retainage percentage and the paperwork required for final payment all appear. So does breach — including a liquidated damages calculation and whether the owner can also sue for actual damages. Add Virginia's written residential contract requirements, subcontracting obligations, and the ADR ladder from negotiation through mediation to arbitration.
Project Management 7 items
Scheduling drives this topic. Know why the critical path method shows interdependencies and calendar or bar charts do not (Scheduling and Project Management chapter — Scheduling Methods section (Page 9-4)), how to compute activity duration from labor hours and available hours per day (Scheduling Process section (Page 9-1)), and the difference between float time and contingency time. Beyond the schedule: the preliminary cash flow budget, the materials expediter's role on the supervisory team, just-in-time delivery benefits, and who approves shop drawings.
Risk Management 3 items
Three items spread across insurance and bonds. Builder's risk covers the structure under construction (Managing Risk chapter — Property Insurance section (Page 4-3)). Completed operations covers claims after the job is done (Other Types of Liability Insurance section (Page 4-4)). Virginia workers' compensation kicks in at a specific employee count, full-time or part-time (Workers' Compensation Insurance section (Page 4-5)). On bonds, know which one keeps liens off the owner's property versus which guarantees performance or payment (Page 4-7 to 4-8, Managing Risk chapter — Types of Bonds section).
Safety 5 items
Straight OSHA numbers, and the exact figure is what matters. Fall protection trigger height on unprotected edges (29 CFR 1926, §1926.501(b)(1)). Guardrail deflection limit under the 200-pound load (§1926.502(b)(4)). Anchorage strength per employee attached (§1926.502(d)(15)). When a stairway needs a handrail and stairrail (§1926.1052(c)(1)). How far ladder side rails extend above the landing (§1926.1053(b)(1)). Plus the oral reporting window for hospitalizations (NASCLA Contractors Guide to Business, Law and Project Management - Virginia, Chapter 12, 29 CFR 1904).
Labor Laws 3 items
Deadlines and prohibitions. Form I-9 completion timing after hire (Chapter 11 — Immigration and Nationality Act section). Latest hour a 14- or 15-year-old may work in summer, plus daily and weekly caps (Chapter 11 — Hiring Minors for Construction Work section). The Virginia New Hire Reporting deadline (Chapter 11 — New Hire Reporting section). And under the ADA, what you may and may not ask or require before a job offer (Appendix M — Can I Require Medical Examinations section).
Financial Management 5 items
Expect to run numbers. Liquidity ratio for paying current debts, profit margin as net income over revenue (Chapter 14 (Financial Management) — Profitability Ratio section), working capital from the balance sheet, and straight-line depreciation with salvage value (Depreciation Methods section). The hardest item type is percentage of completion: compute costs-to-date over total estimated costs, apply it to the contract amount, then compare to billings and classify the difference correctly. Also know when the accrual method records an expense.
Federal and State Taxes 4 items
Who needs an EIN and who can use a Social Security number (Chapter 15 (Tax Basics)). Virginia withholding filing frequency by quarterly liability bracket (Appendix N (Virginia Withholding Tax Guide)). Your deposit schedule during a first year in business (Tax Basics chapter — Deposit Schedule section). The penalty rate tied to how many days a deposit is late (Tax Basics chapter — Penalties section). The wage threshold that makes you liable for state and federal unemployment taxes (Tax Basics chapter — Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA) section).
Lien Laws 1 item
One scored item, drawn from a deep chapter. Know the subcontractor's extra step beyond the Memorandum of Lien — written notice to the owner of amount and character of claim (Page G-7; Virginia Code § 43-7). Know the mechanics' lien agent notice window on one- and two-family dwellings (Chapter 16 — Notice to Mechanics' Lien Agent; Virginia Code § 43-4.01(C)), the look-back limit on sums included in a memorandum (Appendix G; Virginia Code § 43-4, Page 263), and the felony class under Virginia Code § 43-13.2.
Sample 1 — Estimating and Bidding
Question: A contractor is comparing estimating methods for an upcoming project. Which method bundles all cost factors such as labor, materials, equipment, and subcontractors into a single price for an entire task?
- A. Unit price method
- B. Quantity take-off method
- C. Square-foot method
- D. Conceptual estimate method
Correct Answer: A
The unit price method rolls labor, materials, equipment and subcontractors into one price for the whole task. The guide's example: placing and finishing a 2,000-square-foot concrete slab at $2.00 per square foot gives a total unit price of $4,000. That is different from the quantity take-off method, which prices labor and materials separately, line by line. Watch the wording — "bundles all cost factors" into "a single price" is the tell. See NASCLA Contractors Guide, Bidding and Estimating chapter — Other Methods of Estimating section (Page 7-5).
Sample 2 — Contract Management
Question: A ______ breach is a serious violation of the contract that may void the contract and will most likely end up in litigation.
- A. partial
- B. material
- C. constructive
- D. nominal
Correct Answer: B
A material breach is a serious violation of the contract. A contractor who refuses to perform or complete the job, or an owner who refuses to pay, has committed a material breach — the kind that may void the contract and most likely lands in litigation. Fill-in-the-blank items like this reward knowing the exact label the guide uses, not the general idea. Keep the breach types straight before exam day. See NASCLA Contractors Guide, Contract Management chapter — Breach of Contract section.
Sample 3 — Project Management
Question: You are a contractor managing a project using CPM scheduling. The foundation pour is on the critical path and is delayed by one week due to a permit issue. By how much is the overall project delayed?
- A. One week
- B. No delay if float time is available
- C. The delay depends on contingency time only
- D. Two weeks due to cascading effects
Correct Answer: A
Critical path tasks have zero float. Delay one by a week and the whole project slides a week — no more, no less. The float-time option is the trap: float exists on non-critical tasks, so it cannot absorb a critical path delay. The "cascading effects" option invents a multiplier the guide never states. See NASCLA Contractors Guide, Scheduling and Project Management chapter — Critical Path section (Page 9-5).
The real bar is 35 correct answers out of 50 scored questions. Score your practice attempts against that number and nothing else.
Treat your first full attempt as a diagnostic, not a verdict. Take it cold, under the clock. The number matters less than the topic breakdown underneath it. That breakdown tells you where your study hours belong.
Weight your review by outline item counts. Estimating and Bidding and Contract Management are 10 items each — 20 items of the exam between them. Project Management adds 7, Safety and Financial Management 5 each. Lien Laws is 1. Missing every Lien Laws question costs you one point; missing half of Estimating costs you five. Fix the heavy topics first.
Then look at how you missed. Wrong formula is a study problem. Right formula, wrong arithmetic is a slow-down problem. Couldn't find it in the book is a familiarity problem, and that one you fix before exam day, not during. Retake until your weak topics stop being weak, and until you finish with time left over.
Adding overhead instead of dividing by it. Given direct costs and overhead percentages, the tempting move is to multiply direct costs by the combined percentage and add. Our practice question rejects that. Overhead is a percentage of revenue, so direct costs are the remainder — divide by that decimal. Two of the wrong options are built from the addition shortcut and look perfectly reasonable. See NASCLA Contractors Guide, Bidding and Estimating chapter — Calculating an Overhead Percentage section (Page 7-6).
Mixing up bid shopping, bid peddling and bid rigging. All three are unethical bidding practices and all three appear as options against each other. The distinction is who moves and when: the sub who approaches the general contractor after award to undercut the original price is peddling (Bidding and Estimating chapter — Bid Peddling section (Page 7-2)); coordinating with other bidders to fix the outcome is rigging (Bid Rigging section (Page 7-2)). Read the scenario for who initiated contact.
Guessing the OSHA number instead of checking it. Safety items live or die on one figure. Our guardrail practice question offers 42 inches, which is the normal top edge height, when the answer is the 39-inch minimum under downward load (29 CFR 1926, §1926.502(b)(4)). Our fall protection question offers 10 feet against the correct 6 feet (§1926.501(b)(1)). This is an open-book exam — look it up.
Stopping halfway through a percentage of completion problem. Our percentage of completion practice question asks you to compute the ratio, apply it to the contract amount, compare cumulative earnings to billings, and then classify the difference as a current asset or current liability. Candidates who compute 40% and stop pick the wrong classification. Finish all four steps (Chapter 14 (Financial Management) — Percentage of Completion Method section).
Ignoring the clock on calculation-heavy topics. You get 100 minutes for 50 questions, which works out to about 2 minutes per question. Definition items go quickly; estimating and financial items take longer when you need a lookup. Bank time on the easy ones, flag the long calculations and come back.
| Questions | 50 questions |
| Time limit | 100 minutes |
| Passing score | 35 correct answers out of 50 scored questions |
| Books in the exam room | Open book |
| Exam fee | The examination fee is $40 for one portion, $72 for two portions and $85 for three portions. |
- A retake cannot be scheduled on the same day as the examination taken, but unsuccessful candidates may be able to retest within two business days depending on space availability.
Source: Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation Contractor Examination Candidate Information Bulletin, 6/5/2024. Check the bulletin before test day: fees and rules can change.