Construction
Construction insurance covers the project: the works being built, the plant and equipment on site, the contractors doing the work, and the liability exposure while everything's in progress. It's one of the most specialised lines, with wording that changes project by project.
We place contract works, plant, and liability cover for developers, contractors, and project owners, matched to contract terms, site conditions, and the specific risks of each build.
Cover
What this typically covers
Contract works
The thing being built, in whatever state it is in today. Materials on site, the half-finished structure, and the sections already complete but not yet handed over.
The permanent and temporary works during construction: materials, partial works, and completed sections prior to handover.
Plant & equipment
The machines doing the building, owned or hired. Hired-in plant usually carries a contractual obligation to insure it, and that obligation is easy to miss until something is damaged.
Owned and hired plant on site, from small tools to heavy construction equipment.
Public & products liability
The public, the neighbours, and anyone else who is not part of the project. Falling material, a services line cut through, dust and vibration in the building next door.
Third-party injury and property damage arising from construction activities.
Workers' compensation
Site staff beyond what COIDA answers for, including the subcontractors whose own cover may not respond when the moment arrives.
Cover for site staff beyond COIDA, including contractors and sub-contractors.
Delay in start-up
The project finishes late because of damage that was covered, and the money that was supposed to start flowing does not. It follows the material damage claim, and it dies with it.
Lost revenue when completion is delayed beyond the contractual handover date due to insured events.
Professional indemnity (design)
The design was wrong rather than the building work. A different exposure with a different trigger, and on design-and-build contracts one party often carries both.
Negligent design, engineering, or project-management errors causing physical or financial loss.
Limits
What this will not cover
Defective workmanship, and how far that reaches
Every policy excludes the cost of putting bad work right. Wordings differ sharply on whether resulting damage to the rest of the works is covered, and that difference is worth reading before signing.
Wear on the plant
Mechanical and electrical breakdown of machinery is maintenance, not damage. The policy answers when something happens to the plant, not when the plant stops on its own.
Penalties for being late
Liquidated damages under the contract are a contractual debt, not an insured loss. Delay in start-up answers to insured damage and only to that.
The period after handover
Cover ends when the works are taken over, subject to whatever maintenance or defects period was bought. Extending the programme without extending the policy is a routine and expensive oversight.
Claim
When you claim
Make the site safe, then notify
Photograph the works before anything is cleared or rebuilt. On a live site the instinct is to keep going, and a contract works claim can be lost because the next shift tidied the evidence away.
Who is insured matters as much as what
These policies are written in joint names, principal, contractor and subcontractors, and the claim is brought by whoever carries the risk under the contract at that stage of the works. Read the contract and the policy together, before there is a loss to argue about.
Delay in start-up follows the damage
A delay in start-up claim only responds if the material damage claim is accepted, and it is measured against the completion date in the contract. Penalties, financing and the client's own losses all run from that date, so the two claims are prepared as one.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Whichever the contract says, and it has to be read before work starts. Most standard forms put contract works on one party in joint names with the other, and the failure mode is both of them assuming the other did it.
Only where they are named or fall inside the definition of insured parties. Check it per contract rather than assuming, because a subcontractor outside the project policy is a claim that lands on somebody else.
Cover for the revenue lost when insured damage pushes completion past the contractual date. It only responds where the material damage claim is accepted, and it is measured against the programme, so the two claims are prepared together.
Not under contract works, which answers for physical damage. Design error is professional indemnity. On design-and-build contracts one party often carries both exposures and buys only one of the policies.