On construction and supply contracts, the insurance clause is not a formality — it defines a policy you are contractually required to hold, often in a specific form, and non-compliance can hold up payment.
What the clause usually specifies
- The type of cover: contractors all risk, erection all risk, liability, professional indemnity.
- Minimum limits, sometimes per event and in the aggregate.
- Who must be named as insured — often the employer alongside the contractor.
- The period, including any maintenance period after handover.
- Whether waiver of subrogation against the employer is required.
Where it goes wrong
Almost always in one of three places: a limit lower than specified, the employer not named, or the maintenance period left out. Each is trivial to fix at placement and awkward to fix once the contract is signed and work has started.
Send us the insurance clause before you price the tender, not after you win it. Building cover to a wording is straightforward; retrofitting it is not, and the cost lands in the middle of the job.
If the project runs long
Extend the policy before it expires. Cover does not follow a project timetable automatically, and a gap in the final weeks of a job is a well-known way to lose an otherwise valid claim.