General Liability Insurance for Concrete Contractors
Concrete construction accidents are bound to happen at a site despite your best plans. Suppose someone slips and falls on a wet patch of concrete and gets tracked across your client's floor. While these could purely be accidental, the aggrieved party might file a claim citing bodily injury or property damage. Overall, concrete contractor general liability insurance covers the following:
If you are running a small concrete contracting business, you could bundle general liability insurance with commercial property insurance. This will be in a business owner's policy (BOP) which ensures more comprehensive coverage at a significantly lower cost.
Note, however, that there are prerequisites to qualifying for a BOP. Specifically, you have to:
Have fewer than 100 employees
Work from a small workspace
Make less than $1 million in annual revenue
Require less than 12 months of business interruption insurance
Professional Liability Insurance for Concrete Contractors
As a concrete contractor, you will be contracted to provide advice, consultancy, designs, inspection, and certification, similar to tile contractors and paving contractors. By virtue of this scope of work, you are exposed to allegations of poor advice, negligence, and misinformation.
To account for such claims, you are going to need professional indemnity insurance (PII), also referred to as an errors and omissions (E&O) policy. The latter provides cover for the legal costs and other expenses that'll arise as a result of such claims. If it is decided that compensation must be provided to the aggrieved party, professional liability insurance will also take care of this.
Cyber Liability Insurance for Concrete Contractors
As a concrete contractor, you handle sensitive information, including your customer's credit card information. This makes you susceptible to hacks and ransomware attacks. To protect your business and your reputation, it would be best that you add cyber liability to your insurance package. Also referred to as data breach insurance, this coverage for concrete contractors, electrical contractors, and other contractors pays for:
Notification of affected customers
Data recovery
Data breach investigations
Cyber extortion payments, including ransom
Threat monitoring services
Efficacy Insurance for Concrete Contractors
Suppose you are subcontracted to install a precast flood defense wall or a pre-cast lintel that either fails to prevent the flooding of the client's wooden flows or collapses under water pressure. In such a scenario, you want to have efficacy insurance as part of the basic foundation of your insurance package as a concrete contractor.
Also commonly referred to as inefficiency insurance, this policy is meant to protect your business in the event the measure you suggested and implemented "fails to perform" as anticipated. It is prudent to mention that in most instances, you'll find the efficacy insurance included in a standard concrete business insurance policy. Still, it is best that you inquire from your insurer of choice, as some insurers do, in fact, exclude it.
Workers' Compensation Insurance for Concrete Contractors
As a concrete contractor, there's quite the likelihood that you've got employees working for you. Unfortunately, as with any other construction gig, concrete contracting has a high risk of injuries. The latter could place a tremendous financial burden on your business which is where workers' compensation insurance comes in.
The policy pays for the medical expenses and missed wages when one of your employees gets injured while on the job.
While you might have health insurance already, it might not cover site accidents wholly, which is why workers' compensation insurance is a must-have. Specifically, workers' compensation covers:
Immediate medical costs
Ongoing medical costs, such as physiotherapy
Partial lost wages during the time that the employee is unable to work
Note that most insurers will include employer's liability insurance as part of their workers' compensation offering. The employer's liability policy for concrete contractors, general contractors, and masonry contractors covers your business in the event that an aggrieved employee sues you. The policy will cater to attorney's fees, court costs, and settlements.
Your tools and equipment are at the core of your concrete contracting. If anything were to happen to these, it could mean downtime or even closure of business. To cushion your business from the cost of repair or replacement of these contractor's tools and equipment, it would be best that you invest in a contractor's tools and equipment policy. This policy will cover the following:
An insider tip when investing in insurance for concrete contractors would be to check whether the "ripping and tear'' exclusion is present within the policy you intend to purchase.
You find that many insurers will apply this exclusion with the aim of reducing their exposure. The issue is that, as with pre-cast products and screeds, concrete can be expensive to dig out and remove. To further protect yourself, you want to have your insurer add back the ripping and tear cover into your concrete contractor policy. Note that this will attract an additional premium.
Further, you'll find that to further reduce their exposure, insurers will exclude the cost of repair or rectification of a product from the concrete contractor insurance offering.
Latent Defect Insurance
An additional policy you must have as part of your standard insurance for concrete contractors is latent defect insurance. Consider this. Most of the issues that will arise with concrete application and construction take some time to materialize. This policy resolves this gap by then covering the cost of repairs or rebuilding in the event of structural issues months after the completion of a contract.
Builders Risk Insurance
Builders' risk insurance is useful for undertaking large-scale projects. You can use this type of concrete company insurance policy to cover costs if materials or structures get lost or damaged due to fire, explosions, theft, fire, winds, and other covered perils. Note that builders' risk insurance for concrete contractors and swimming pool contractors doesn’t cover damage caused by faulty design or workmanship.
Concrete Pumping Insurance
Concrete pumping insurance is a specialty coverage for concrete pumping contractors. General liability, pollution liability, commercial property, and equipment breakdown insurance are all included in a concrete pumping insurance program. Liability coverage limits of concrete pump insurance range from $1 million-$10 million. Concrete pump truck insurance is also included, which fuses equipment breakdown and commercial auto insurance.
Concrete Truck Insurance
Concrete truck insurance is a specialized cover for the mixer you use for work. This covers not only the vehicle but also the activities it does. Also known as concrete mixer insurance, policies you can get from this are general liability, commercial auto, trailer interchange, and inland marine insurance. Sometimes, concrete agitator insurance might come with rental reimbursement coverage that covers expenses if you need to hire a mixer owned by another contractor.
