Contractor

A contractor is in a legal sense one who enters into a binding agreement to perform a certain service or provide a certain product in exchange for valuable consideration, usually money but sometimes other goods or services in a barter arrangement. In the building trades, a contractor is one who is engaged in the construction of a building or buidlings for a client. The construction site is often overseen by a general contractor, who may perform the work entirely through the efforts of himself and his employees or who may employ subcontractors to perform some or all of the work.

The term contractor is also applied to a private company, such as a military contractor, which provides products or services to a government.