Concrete Contractor Insurance

Concrete contractors work in a wide range of activities, working on a client’s property, be it city land, commercial building sites or domestic homes.

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This work always means you and your employees are encountering risks just by going onto the site, and you need Concrete Contractor Insurance to protect you.

Concrete contractors work in a wide range of activities, working on a client’s property, be it city land, commercial building sites or domestic homes. This work always means you and your employees are encountering risks just by going onto the site, and you need Concrete Contractor Insurance to protect you.

What are the new opportunities in the concrete contracting business world?

Concrete contractor services are now in great demand.

One reason has been the government’s push towards clean air through replacement of gas-burning vehicles with electric or hybrid cars.

This has meant a completely different profile for parking facilities in cities and towns.

Instead of on-street parking, or low-key open-air parking lots, the demand now is for more dense structured multi-level parking facilities, where people can “park-and-charge” their cars, thus always having the best of both worlds.

In almost every city and town, authorities and private enterprises are looking to put up (or sink) multi-level parking garages with charge points at every bay.

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The natural and common feature of these structures is that they are easiest and cheapest to build with poured concrete in prefabricated moulds, which allows for the electrical wiring to be built into the structures.

A concrete contractor can build these structures handling every phase of the process from mixing ingredients and building the prefab structure offsite  and then going on to pouring and settling the mix onsite. 

Many states require concrete contractors to have a license – more about this later.

As well as the parking facilities in public areas, there’s a need for paving contractors to lay concrete driveway at the home or office property.

Repaving concrete driveways that have been damaged by weather is becoming a more frequent requirement, due to the violent hurricanes and tropical storms that global warming is bringing.

What is the typical plan for domestic concrete construction jobs?

In the beginning, any site must be excavated by removing any bushes, trees or stumps.

After that, the contractor must grade the area, to make a level surface for the concrete, with proper drainage, over a base of compacted gravel.

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Then the concrete is poured, smoothed and sealed. Concrete house insurance or concrete home insurance pays for the risks involved when working around domestic properties.

Commercial concrete construction

Concrete contractors are used for pouring concrete on construction sites.

The wide range of locations mean some risks are inherent to the work, depending on the type of job being done.

As well, there are unpredictable events, like accidents, unexpected weather changes, even man-made events like vandalism and theft.

A typical example from liability insurance concrete builders taylorsville was where tools were left on the floor, and the client tripped and fell over them.

When the client makes a claim against you and even though it was an accident, accidents happen, no matter what steps you took to prevent them, you are still liable.

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With concrete contractor insurance, you can be ready for such events, to protect your business from any claims.

Is concrete contracting a high-risk business?

Some businesses are considered inherently more dangerous than others.

An electrician will pay more than an interior painter for the same cover, because there are more risks involved.

In some ways, concrete contracting is more risky than most contracting work, mainly because the equipment you need to perform the work is much more expensive, heavier and more specialized.

So a business like a solar panel contractor or plumber has far lower risks of equipment failure and so that part of the insurance would be cheaper for them.

But theft of concrete pouring trucks and mixers is less likely than for a handyman or fencer, so here the insurance is going to be relatively cheap.

All businesses require general liability coverage, and as a contractor this may be part of your contract.

Some states require this cover in order to be licensed.

You will also need to have Workers Compensation insurance if you have employees.

As well, you may want to consider commercial auto insurance, and contractor’s equipment insurance if your levels of risk warrant this.

Have you considered temporary insurance?

If your business is seasonal, or driven mostly by periodic contractual work you are given, then you may benefit from only taking out insurance monthly, weekly or by the day, for periods when you are actually active.

It’s no longer the only option to be paying for annual coverage when you don’t need it full-time.

Once the work is done, you can just stop the cover until you get the next contract, or the snow-bound streets free up.

With temporary insurance, you are insured on a per-period basis.

If you aren’t working, you don’t need to pay.

You apply for the insurance policy based on the dates during which cover is in effect.

This means that you can take out cover for the days or weeks you’re working onsite because short-term liability insurance for concrete contractors keeps you covered over that specific timeframe or activity.

If you’re in the middle of a project and have an active policy and need to extend it, most companies will allow you to do this, with an adjustment to the premium based on the extra time (with some extra cost for administration).

Is temporary insurance more expensive?

Every insurance company loads its policies with “front-end” costs relating to the expenses that it has to carry in administration, like creating, marketing, registering and processing the policy and any claims that arise from it.

This means that a policy for one week starts off with a “base” premium of 10-15% of a standard annual policy even though it’s only giving 2% of the actual risk cover.

Think of what happens when you hail a cab.

Immediately, the “flag-fall” charge starts at a few dollars, and you then pay on top of that for the mileage and time.

If you have already had an annual insurance policy, the cost of your temporary policy may make it seem to be expensive, but overall if you are not working full-time, you can save between 50% to 60% of annual premiums if you take out cover for only the times 

What insurance must contractors have?

The following is a basic list:

  • General liability
  • Public liability
  • Professional liability
  • Workers Compensation of you have employees
  • Commercial 
  • Equipment
  • Business interruption

If you have special concrete contractor activities, talk to a qualified broker, agent or business such as concrete insurance baltimore md, a local concrete insurance agency, concrete insurance companies in your state, concrete insurance agencies in your city, concrete insurance programs and concrete insurance carriers.

What does a contractor’s insurance cover?

The main forms of liability insurances are:

General liability insurance for concrete contractors covers you in case a claim is made of personal injury or damage to the property of others.

In most cases, general liability insurance does not cover work or personal injury.

As the term implies, personal injury is any injury or damage to a third party, such as a customer or visitor, or to their property by your services or company.

It gives you insurance specifically designed to cater to the sort of accidental injuries and damages that can happen while you are engaged in your concrete contracting activity.

Bodily injury and property damage liability is probably the most important part of general liability insurance concrete builders need.

Suppose there are visitors onto a building site in the course of running a contract. In that case, liability insurance concrete builders provides protection against any claims of damage or injury while on the site.

For property damage, the coverage under liability insurance for concrete builders protects your business from claims for third-party property damage by having liability insurance for concrete builders.

General liability insurance covers you from broad claims for personal and material damage resulting from the concrete contracting business.

It is mainly considered the first pillar of any type of business insurance, mainly because of the comprehensive coverage it offers.

In addition to property damage and injury, liability insurance may also cover medical and legal costs arising from claims related to your operations.

Professional Liability insurance protects you in case a customer claims that the work you provided either was not what you were supposed to do, or was not up to the proper standard.

The contracting world today has become a highly litigious environment, with many people looking to sue.

You need concrete cancer building insurance or concrete cancer covered by insurance that is protecting you either by concrete contractor insurance or concrete construction insurance.

Concrete cancer insurance is essential for contractors so they get protection in case customers claim that your acts involved negligence, errors, or omissions.

If the matter turns into a lawsuit, even if it was found to be without merit, the cost of defense can be substantial, and the impact on your reputation can be damaging.

Error & Omission insurance covers you against claims when you provide services like these:

  • A professional service
  • Professional advice to clients
  • Contract construction services.

Since most of your concrete contracting work involves one or more of these professional services, you need professional E&O coverage because these services come with risks.

You could be held liable for:

  • breach of contract
  • providing incomplete work
  • providing substandard work
  • work errors or oversights
  • missing deadlines

In the event that your customer claims that any of these resulted in financial losses or reputational damage for them, then they could sue to recover from you all damages.

For example, suppose you are managing the laying of concrete structures on a building project and accidentally forgot to give your client some required approval documentation.

This may result in project delays costing thousands.

Even if there was nothing wrong with the quality of your work, a difficult or dissatisfied client could claim against your concrete cutting insurance policy when they sue your business over a perceived problem.

In that case, you might win the lawsuit but still have to pay attorney fees and court costs out of pocket.

Without proper cheap concrete contractor insurance, concrete construction type insurance or baker concrete construction insurance, a lawsuit could present a significant financial difficulty for your business.

Equipment insurance is the right choice for any contracting company that brings their own equipment to customer locations in order to perform work for a contract, or who stores the equipment there when it’s not in use.

This is largely the case for concrete contractors, where most of the work is performed onsite, not back on your home turf.

Although the risk of theft may be lower, it’s almost impossible to store the equipment indoors, so storm damage, vandalism and fire can completely destroy it, and it’s expensive and not easy to replace quickly.

The level of cover you need can be calculated based on the replacement cost, in which case it would be the most expensive, or on book value which is cheaper but then you may not be able to replace it for the payout value.

Business interruption insurance, sometimes called business income insurance, or hazard insurance protects your income in case your business suffers some major event such as a natural disaster, national strike, sabotage, and more. 

Interruption cover is essential for businesses like concrete contracting that relies on heavy equipment and machinery to run the business.

To clarify the difference between commercial insurance and business interruption insurance is that property insurance covers you against damages and physical losses, whereas business interruption insurance covers you for income foregone from lost work due to some disaster.

Typically, business interruption insurance covers, up to the limit of the insurance policy, for:

  • Loss of profits, which means any loss or reduction of net income during the recovery period.
  • Out-of-pocket expenditure like rent, wages, utility bills, interest on loans and local taxes.
  • Cost of moving if you have to move either temporarily or permanently to a new location, including relocation and rental costs.
  • Service Interruption due to damage to power lines that service your work site,  such as electricity, gas, water and so on. If stoppage of any of these utilities forces you to halt activity, you can claim under your service interruption coverage.

Most concrete insurance carriers’ policies cover these losses and expenses over the timeframe required to repair or replace the damaged or destroyed property, or relocate into a new location and reopen the business (whichever is shorter, typically).

To give an example – your concrete tilt up insurance construction type customized trailer that mixes is broken into and vandalized.

Your mixer is gone and you can’t do any more work until it is replaced.

This can take as long as six weeks – such special equipment isn’t available from ready mix concrete insurance program to be delivered when ordered.

Business interruption insurance will pay you out for the six weeks that your business stops operating, but not for the actual cost of the mixer.

It is covered by equipment insurance.

Workers Compensation Insurance

In most states, this type of insurance is legally required for any business where the company employs one or more workers.

It’s important to know that the word “employee” does not just mean full-time workers.

It includes part-timers, temporary, casual workers, and subcontractors.

Workers’ compensation insurance gives cover to your employees from any injuries or illnesses that are a result of work-related accidents.

It is not related to health cover, which may be another state-mandated requirement.

The insurance covers the employee’s wages for the time while he is off work sick due to working conditions or injury, as well as his or her medical expenses.

It can also protect you in any lawsuit connected with an unsafe work environment as long as he follows OSHA requirements.

To be eligible to get any payment from workers comp insurance, the injury or illness must be directly related to work.

In the concrete pouring business, working with heavy dangerous equipment is a necessary part of the job.

This is why, to protect yourself and your employees, you must have workers’ compensation insurance.

Equipment Insurance

Concrete mixer insurance and volumetric concrete mixer insurance and concrete pumping insurance programs cover specialized and costly equipment, which is very expensive to replace in case of any damage, loss, or theft.

In particular, the equipment has to be moved around extensively and sometimes stored in insecure and unsafe environments.

The tools may be subject to malicious damage, deliberate fire, theft, other such deliberate acts, or acts of nature like lightning strikes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other highly damaging natural events.

Unless you can afford to immediately replace such expensive gear quickly out of your own pocket, you should have full-level equipment insurance so that you can immediately buy any equipment needed to keep the business running.

And given that the typical sorts of tools you need aren’t cheap, where even a powerful bench saw can cost more than $1500, it may be hard to replace immediately in the event of theft.

There are a multitude of different tools that can be insured including hired equipment, and personal tools including hand tools and power tools.

Commercial Vehicle Insurance

Concrete contractors use specialized vehicles to get the ready-mix to and from job sites.

These will require special concrete truck insurance or concrete mixer truck insurance because of the size and weight of the trucks.

Beware – most policies for car insurance do not cover the theft and damage to private vehicles used for business purposes, which is another big reason you absolutely need commercial concrete vehicle insurance.

Most states, other than Virginia and New Hampshire, require this type of insurance.

How much does it cost to insure a concrete company?

This depends on the size of your business, which will affect concrete pump insurance cost.

The location of the operations will also affect total costs.

Concrete business insurance and concrete building insurance are both specialized forms of liability insurance for concrete contractors, so you should research by searching the internet for local concrete insurance companies, good concrete insurance and concrete insurance programs offered by concrete insurance carriers.

What are the suggested limits of coverage?

General liability: $2 million aggregate, with $1 million for a single claim

Product liability: $2 million aggregate, with $1 million for a single claim

Professional indemnity: $100,000 with deductible of $1,000

Other coverage depends on your own business specifics.

Talk to local concrete insurance companies, good concrete insurance, and concrete insurance programs, and local concrete insurance carriers to get the best deal

FAQ

Should I have tool and equipment theft insurance?

Over a billion dollars in concrete construction equipment was stolen off of sites last year and that doesn’t include material.

Less than  a quarter of stolen equipment is recovered. Everything can be snatched off-site causing tens of thousands of dollars of loss during a single project.

Liability insurance for concrete builders will compensate you for these losses.

Can I insure for weather damage or fire?

Sites under construction are often vulnerable to storms.

If fire or severe weather damages the building site, you concrete supplies or equipment during construction, the reconstruction clean-up time and costs can be more costly and time-consuming than the original building project.

Insurance concrete commercial will cover the cost of repairing the damage or restarting from scratch.

Some concrete insurance programs will even cover costs of clean-up and debris removal.

What is not covered by commercial or equipment insurance?

Extreme weather and natural disasters like hurricanes, tropical storms, earthquakes, forest fires, floods typically are not covered by commercial or equipment insurance.

If you need coverage for hurricanes, earthquakes or floods, be sure to talk to your insurance agent about a concrete contractor insurance supplemental application to add this cover.

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