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Insurance Essentials for Precast Industry Professi ...
Insurance Essentials for Precast Industry Professi ...
Insurance Essentials for Precast Industry Professionals Webinar
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Good afternoon. Welcome to PCI's webinar series. Today's presentation is Insurance Essentials for Precast Industry Professionals. I'm Nicole Clout, Marketing Manager at PCI, and I will be your moderator for this session. Before I turn the controls over to your presenter for today, I have a few introductory items to note. Earlier today, we sent a reminder email to all registered attendees. The email contained a webinar attendance sign-in sheet, a guide to downloading your Certificate of Continuing Education, and a PDF of today's presentation. The handouts are also available now and can be found in the handout section located near the bottom of your GoToWebinar toolbox. If there are multiple listeners at your location, please submit a sign-in sheet and send the completed sign-in sheet back to PCI per the instructions on the form. The attendance sheet is only for use at locations with multiple listeners on the line. If you are the only person at your location, there is no need to complete an attendance sheet, as we already have your information from registration. If you cannot download any of the handouts, please email pcimarketing at marketing at pci.org. Please note that all attendance lines are muted. The GoToWebinar toolbox has an area for you to raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you will receive a private chat message from me. If you have a question, please type it into the questions pane, where I'll be keeping track of them to read to the presenters during the Q&A period. Also, a pop-up survey will appear after the webinar ends. Today's presentation will be recorded and uploaded to the PCI eLearning Center. PCI has met the standards and requirements of the Registered Continuing Education Program, and we can offer one PDH for this presentation. Credit earned on completion of this program will be reported to rcep.net. A Certificate of Completion will be issued to each participant. As such, it does not include content that may be deemed or construed to be an approval or endorsement by RCEP. With hundreds of attendees for our webinars, it is impractical to prepare individual certificates. As PCI has met the standards and requirements of RCEP, we will upload attendance data to www.rcep.net within 10 days, and you can print your Certificates of Continuing Education. Your login name at www.rcep.net is your email address, so please do not leave that blank if you are completing the sign-in sheet. We need your email address to get you your certificate for this course. AIA credit is not being offered for this presentation. The course description for this webinar is, Unlock the Secrets to Thriving in the Ever-Evolving Insurance Landscape with our Comprehensive Education Session on the Industry's Best Practices. Understanding insurance in the context of the precast industry can be a daunting task, especially for non-insurance experts. This session is not a sales presentation, but rather it is designed to demystify insurance topics and provide a tailored approach tailored specifically for professionals in the precast industry. You will gain actionable insights and skills to navigate contractual insurance requirements with confidence. Our presenters for today are Gary Semmer, Executive Vice President and Construction Practice Leader at Assured Partners. Joining Gary is Justin Schneider, Construction Practice Attorney at Assured Partners. I will now hand the controls over to the presenters so we can begin our presentation. Well, great. Thanks, Nicole and Aliyah for hosting and moderating today's webinar. I am Gary Semmer, Executive Vice President, Construction Practice Leader with Assured Partners. I am based in Chicago. I have got Justin Schneider with me today. Justin is our Construction Practice Advisory Attorney. He is based in Denver, Colorado. Justin consults to our Assured Partner Construction Practice team across the country and consults to various clients on legal indemnification and other things in construction contracts. This afternoon, we are going to go through a lot of common insurance requirements that show up in construction-related contracts. We are going to focus in a little bit more on PCI producers. We will talk about erectors from time to time. We will talk about the relationships between yourselves and between a general contractor and possibly an owner and talk a little bit downstream about your subcontractors. With that, I am going to have Paige over to our first slide on indemnification. I am going to talk just a moment. I am going to turn the controls over to Justin. I think as most of you folks know, every contract contains some form of an indemnity old harmless agreement which basically says you are going to indemnify upstream parties for acts that you cause that could result in bodily injury, property damage, and sometimes consequential damages depending on how the indemnity agreement reads. As most folks that have reviewed contracts, they vary in form from the AIA, the American Institute of Architects. We are seeing a little more in the consensus docs area which is a little more construction-friendly. Then, as we call it, there are a lot of hybrid versions out there or DIY, do-it-yourself wording. They vary in scope and liability. You have some protection under anti-indemnity statutes in most states, but you still have to review these things carefully to make sure that you are not agreeing to something that is not covered by your liability insurance. In the slide, we define what indemnify means, pay or compensate the other party for its legal liability losses. Defend will show up in the wording basically indemnifying the parties to engage attorneys, manage the litigation proceedings, and then if the claim is covered, the indemnification is brought by the indemnity. Then hold harmless, it is really the promise to pay cost that may result from a claim covered by the indemnity provision and any subsequent fallout stemming from the claim or the settlement. I am going to turn the discussion over to Justin for a moment. We will go to the next slide and talk about some of the things, issues, pitfalls, things that you see just in indemnity contracts today. Thank you, Gary. Again, my name is Justin Schneider. I would say the biggest issue and the most common issue that we see is in these indemnification sections is that indemnity language is drafted to where you are picking up as a downstream contractor, you are picking up the liability for any claims or losses that arise out of the performance of the agreement. Most of the time that includes a given upstream or an indemnified party caused those damages. So two things that you want to do is you want to make sure you are not picking up the liability for an indemnified party's negligence or omissions or anything like that. And the second one is you want to make sure that you have a consequential damages language in there, which is I say that, but it is called a waiver of consequential damages. And then that includes things like loss to profit, downtime, quite indirect claims, indirect losses. So you want to make sure that you have those two items at a downstream contractor. You want to make sure that you have those two items in your agreement. It will help limit your liability and help make things a little bit more predictable in the event of a claim. But yeah, again, these indemnification are, you know, again, I review these all day long. These indemnification languages and sections, I mean, they come in all shapes and sizes. So, and everybody always wants these agreements to be one size fits all. And honestly, they are not. They need to be tailored to your scope of work as a downstream contractor. And then again, if you are subbing some work out, you want to make sure that your indemnification language is broad enough to capture all the damages that a subcontractor could do. So there's two, you know, there's the give that's coming down from the upstream contractor. And then there's also going down to the downstream contractor. And you want to make sure that both languages properly capture the relationship and also properly capture the risk exposure that both parties are experiencing during the performance of this agreement. So it's always best to review these things. It's never best just to sign and hope that it all works out because, you know, generally speaking, probably there's not going to be a claim. But when there is a claim, it's too late. So you just want to make sure that somebody has reviewed this. And you know, here at Assured Partners, you know, we have resources for our clients and, you know, everybody has attorneys these days. So, you know, reach out to your attorney, reach out to your insurance broker, somebody, just somebody to review them to make sure you're not signing away, you know, a giant claim that's also not picked up by your insurance because, you know, that is the big piece is when you're dealing with claims, you want to make sure that it's backed by your insurance. So you don't want it to come out of your pocket. So, you know, you want to make sure that your policy is broad enough, robust enough to pick up these types of claims based on your normal exposures of work. And also, you want to make sure that your subs insurance policy also picks up the issues and the claims and, you know, it's broad enough to pick up all their claims as well. So again, two things, you want to make sure from the downstream contract, downstream agreement, you're protected. You want to make sure that your sub is also protected, which also protects you in the long run. Great. Thanks. Thanks, Justin. And just as kind of a side note, I'm on the PCI Financial Risk Management Committee, and we had a committee meeting just a little bit before the webinar. And there's talk about doing a webinar strictly on indemnification hold harmless, and that could be coming later this year. One of our colleagues, Brad Parrott, out of Atlanta, does a lot of work for PCI directly and PCI producers. And I think Brad has agreed to do a section strictly on indemnification hold harmless. Okay. We're going to move on. We're going to talk about typical coverage requirements in contracts. We'll start off with workers' compensation. Obviously, you as a producer have to carry it to cover the statutory benefits in the state in which you're working in. If it's just your plant or if you have an erection subsidiary covering wherever they do the work. Employers' liability is a requirement in every workers' comp section. Typical limits, a million each accident, a million disease each employee, a million disease policy limit. You may see contracts that require $500,000, but they might kick up the commercial umbrella liability. We'll talk about that in a moment to help cover the employers' liability type claims that could occur on a particular project. And then what you see in just about every contract today is a waiver of subrogation. And I'm going to have Justin kind of weigh in on what a waiver of subrogation does and the like. And with that, let's go to the next slide because we're going to, you'll see an example of this. So again, the waiver of subrogation, it's very common. I would say, you know, 99 out of 100 agreements require waiver of subrogation. And waiver of subrogation, again, so we're talking about downstream. So this will be a requirement for any prime contractor that you have. The insurance group section will have your insurer have waiver of subrogation in favor of the prime general contractor owner. And that means that in the event of a claim, waiver of subrogation prevents the carrier or the insurer to come back towards the general contractor and or the owner down the road to recoup some money if they find out later down the road that the general contractor or the prime contractor or the owner were liable to some degree. It prevents them from being able to seek damages down the road. And everybody wants that because obviously, again, you're trying to prevent losses and prevent claims. So it's something that everybody requires. And you want to require that of your subs. So if you're subbing out a lot of work, you want to make sure that's in there for your subs so you can pass that down. Absolutely. And then what you're seeing on the screen is a sample of a work comp waiver of subrogation. This is for a specific project where you list the project and where it's located. But more common today, the insurance carriers will provide what we'll call a blanket or an automatic waiver of subrogation endorsement, which triggers when it's required by contract. So you'll get away from, you know, having to endorse the worker's comp policy for a particular project and list it out. So the latter is the more preferred way. That way, coverage triggers if it's in the contract and you don't have to worry about it. And as Justin pointed out, it's probably in 98, 99 percent of the construction contracts today. Okay. We're going to shift gears on the next slide and we're going to talk about general liability. And the top, just typical limits you'll see in the construction contracts, a million limit per each occurrence, two million limit per product completed operations and two million in general for non-product completed operations. And you can see there are projects going on around the country where we see higher limits for the primary general liability, two million occurrence, four billion product completed ops, four million general aggregate. And what is happening, there's a trend with larger general contractors. It's not just here in Chicago. It's in New York and other, you know, areas where the general contractor could be the owner, wants higher primary limits. And we'll talk about this in a moment where, you know, we want, they want our coverage to go first, you know, before their coverage comes in and before any umbrella attachments. And B, additional insurance. This is, you know, pretty much 100 percent of the time today. We're going to talk, I'm going to talk just a moment about what the standard industry additional insurance forms are for ongoing operations and completed operations. So, it's ISO, which is the industry organization that publishes policies, endorsements, et cetera, has been doing this for, you know, several years. And today, their CG2010, which is for ongoing operations, and CG2037 is for completed operations, is kind of the gold standard. The October 01, 1001 additions are about as broad as you're going to get in the marketplace today, although there's an earlier version that goes back to November of 85, and I'll date myself, that provided both ongoing and completed operations in the one endorsement. And then come October of 01, and there's a lot of, there was a lot of debate from the insurance carrier side. They wanted to split the ongoing from the completed operations additional insurance. Down below, additional insurance for architects and engineers, I'll comment on that. We'll go through some examples. The item D, primary non-contributory status. This started some years ago and basically states that if we give an upstream party additional insured status under our general liability policy, that the primary non-contributory requirement makes our coverage go first, and whoever we've added as an additional insured, their coverage goes next. And we have an example of that as well. And then item E, waiver of subrogation, same thing. Right, Justin? In general liability, works the same way as comp? Yes, sir, that's correct. Yep, got it. And we'll give you an example of that. Item F, per project aggregate. You'll start to see this more often, you know, requirements from large general contractors, and maybe even large owner developers, which basically says that they want a separate aggregate, separate occurrence aggregate limit on your primary general liability policy for each and every project you do during the policy term. So if the requirement is 1 million, 2 million, okay, you've got 1 million, 2 million for every project you do during that 12-month policy term. And it opens up your liability coverage to the upstream party, in particular, if you've had multiple general liability claims, you know, during the year before it hits the umbrella. And we'll have an example of that. And we'll talk next about completed operations. Item G, statute of repose. Statute of repose is a statute that is just about in every state of the country that basically says that a injured, damaged, injury, or a damage, or property damage or construction defect claim is limited by the number of years the statute says. 10 years is the most common. I think Tennessee has got a four-year statute of repose. There's a couple states, I think, it might be Pennsylvania, Indiana have 12 years, Florida ranges from seven to 10, and the great state of New York, and I don't even think has a statute. But it basically says this is how long you're on the hook from a general liability claim, you caused injury or more importantly, property damage that resulted in a construction defect. And Justin, I'm gonna have you kind of talk about that. What you see most often in terms of number of years, aside from what the statute says? Yeah, generally, like you said, they want the completed operations coverage to extend to the statute of repose, which is good for, it kind of seems a little unusual, but you want it to be protected. You want to be protected as much as possible. And you want your insurance to pick the claim up. So you wanna make sure that that's, that your policy does cover through that. Again, and also when you're going downstream to subs, you wanna make sure that their completed operations coverage also extends to the statute of repose, there's no gaps. You can negotiate it down to three years, you can negotiate it, but generally, everybody's gonna kind of stick with the statute of repose limit. Yeah, and a point is when we send out the slides, there's a schedule of the statute of repose that we're gonna try to attach to it, put out by Sachs and Dornenberger, one of the largest construction liability law firms in the country, and they update it annually. So it's a good reference guide, particularly if you're doing work in different states. Let's end up the general liability discussion, or at least the overview with rigors liability. And this is an area where it's important if you self-perform the erection of your product, okay, self-perform it, and or you sub it out. And basically it says that anything that's on a crane or on a hook that's going up onto a building to be installed, if what's on the hook falls and injures somebody else or damages somebody's property, that there's coverage, more importantly, on the property damage side for that type of installation. And there's a general liability endorsement we'll talk about and we'll show you in a moment. It also could be covered under certain inland marine property equipment policies by coverage extension. But let's flip to the next slide. And we're gonna kind of go through them pretty quick. And just kind of talk, I talked a moment ago about additional insureds. We're gonna use the standard ISO forms to go through these. The CG20 is ongoing operations, as I mentioned earlier. This October 01 is basically the broadest additional insured standard form out there. And if you look at the highlighted section, it says, hey, if you're listed as an additional insured above, we're basically gonna provide coverage for any rising out of your ongoing operations performed for that insured. So it basically says, hey, if we've done the work and we've named you as an additional insured, and there's a bodily injury property damage claim, we're going to afford coverage. Go to the next slide. You're gonna see an update. So this is July of 04, same thing. This is the 2010, the ongoing version. But this is where the ISO, with the support of insurance carriers, started to limit the wording. And if you look at the definition, bodily injury, property damage, et cetera, caused in whole or in part. So instead of a rising out of your work, they're saying that this has got, the injury or the damage has got to be caused in whole or in part by you for your acts or omissions, or the acts of omissions of others acting on your behalf, that would be subcontractors. So they put a restriction in there, okay? Now, in the real world, the July of 04 addition is being accepted on large projects. It's more of the 1001 or an equivalent. And then if we go on to the next section, slide, you're gonna see ISO came back again. The 2010 ongoing operations, additional insured. So in April 13th, they kept in section A1 and 2, and then they put a however in there. And it only applies to the extent permitted by law. So it further restricted the additional insured provision to whom you've had to add, if it's only permitted by law. And then it also talks about under item two, required by a contractor agreement, et cetera, et cetera. So it's got some gotchas in there. And then they further limited it with that April 13 addition over on the right side, C on the lower end. And kind of also talked about required by the contract or agreement. And then they limit it to the available limits under the applicable policy. And so this is where the insurance carriers pushed ISO to limit this. Now this is all good for us, but if the upstream party that we're gonna be named as, that we have to name as additional insureds will not accept this, we gotta go back to the 1001 or some equivalent. And then last but not least, we'll flip the slide and you'll see a further revision December of 19 kind of follows the July 04, the April 13. And then they deleted item C where they talk about providing limits. So that's kind of a series of the ISO additional insured forms. And we're gonna carry on, let's just flip forward. And these are the companion completed operations additional insured forms. Now this is the 2037, this is the October 01. So that goes with the ongoing 1001. Down at the bottom it points out where I did not give your work. So this is the broadest completed operations additional insured form. And then if we flip forward, we'll see a July 04 that kind of follows the 2010 July 04 wording, same thing. And we'll keep moving and you'll see an April 13. Again, in the completed operations side of things, you've got the restrictions under part A, one and two, and the restrictions under part B, one and two. Not gonna go into those, but you'll see, you'll have these as references, when we send out the recording and the slides. And then last but not least, you're gonna see the 2037 completed operations. We'll forward one more slide ahead, 12-19. And again, that follows the ongoing operations 12-19. I'm gonna stop for a moment and say, this is all good. These are all the standard additional insured endorsements, but in the real world, okay, insurance carriers have come up with their own proprietary forms. What they do is they kind of copied some of the wording from these standard additional insurance forms, and then they either follow it almost to the law, or I mean, to the verbatim, and then some put some other hooks and more restrictions in it. So, it's gonna vary by insurance carrier. I don't care if it's a national insurance company, or if it's a regional company, or if it's a specialty company. The key is, when you're working with your insurance broker, okay, that you gotta make sure that the language from the insurance company you're placed with, that their proprietary additional insured form will comply with the contracts that you're signing. And if we use the 1001 arising out of your work, both the ongoing and the completed operations, at the end of the day, you gotta make sure that that wording is gonna be acceptable to whoever you're contracted with. And I just, I'm gonna turn it back to you, Justin, for a moment. We've reviewed additional insured form, and we do it at the client level, but any other takeaways from that? Yeah, again, just kind of going back to, you wanna make sure that, again, you are as protected as possible, and therefore, the arising out of, and the 1001 policy, it's the broadest. You know, it provides the most coverage and most protection for the insurer that's using it. And you just wanna make sure that your subs have that, too. So, again, we kind of keep talking about, you wanna make sure that you're as protected as possible, but you also wanna make sure that your subs are also as protected as possible from these claims. So, there's a greater likelihood of the carrier picking up the claim. And then, again, and the second thing, which we're going, I've seen a lot lately, is where contracts require certain additional insured endorsements. They'll require a more broad, and then the client, the contractor will have a more restricted, limited additional insured endorsement. Essentially, you're in breach of the agreement. So, then you're gonna have a lawsuit about breaching the contract, and that's just more headaches and more mess. So, you just wanna make sure you get out in front of it and make sure that the additional insured that's required in the agreement is the one that you have, and if not, talk to your broker, they can get a switch for you. Absolutely, and then, well said, and at the end of the day, as Justin alluded to, the last thing you want is a liability claim, you know, come back against you, and then you look at your additional insured coverage that you've afforded to the GC or the owner or whomever, and it doesn't match what the contract says, and then in turn, they file a breach of contract suit against you, and you're on your own, and it's an uncovered claim situation. So, be wary of that, and this is where you wanna communicate with your insurance broker on contracts, if something looks out of the ordinary, you don't think your additional insured coverage will comply, send it to your broker, make sure that you've got the right format, or you might have to go out and secure a separate endorsement for a particular project. So, we're gonna move on a little bit, and next slide show you, we talk about additional insureds, engineers, architects, surveyors, they're different than, you know, GCs and owners, and you're seeing the requirement to name these professionals as part of the project on your general liability policy. This is an example of a specific one, where you have to name it, put the project in there, et cetera. There are some insurance carriers, just like they do for owners and general contractors, where you might have a blanket, or an automatic additional insured endorsement for engineer, architect, surveyors. So, this is just an example of what the standard, you know, one that looks like, and then I'll leave you with this, that this really is only applicable if you've not hired the engineer, architect, or surveyor. If you've hired them, there's another form that you would have to put on the policy to make sure that coverage is afforded if it's required by contract. Next slide, we talked a moment ago about primary non-contributory, other insurance. This is a kind of a sample standard one that basically says that if you've added these parties as additional insureds, our insurance is primary, it will not seek contribution from any other available insurance policy for an additional insured, meaning our coverage goes first, and I'll make an example, let's say we're contracted with a GC, and you've got a primary non-contributory requirement in the additional insured, that means we go first, the GC goes second. Now, there's a law, there's what's called exhaustion of limit laws across the US, and there's vertical, and then there's horizontal, and vertical exhaustion basically says, hey, if we've added somebody as an additional insured, we've got primary non-contributory coverage, our coverage goes first on the general liability, and if there's an umbrella requirement, which there usually is, our umbrella goes next, so that's vertical exhaustion. Horizontal exhaustion, by comparison, means all primary general liability policies have to be exhausted before you go to the umbrella, so in Illinois, for example, and I think the horizontal states are Illinois, California, Georgia, Florida, New York, maybe New Jersey, but the whole point is, if we've listed somebody as an additional insured and a claim has occurred, our general liability goes first, so whatever the limits are, and let's just take an example, we're a contractor with a general contractor, then the general contractor's primary general liability goes next, then we get to the umbrella, and let's say we had a million, the GC had a million, and it's a $3 million claim, and then at that point, if we've got an umbrella, our $1 million umbrella would step in next to satisfy the $3 million settlement, but let's say it was a $5 million claim, and we had a, we got one for us, one from the GC, and let's say we've got a $5 million umbrella, the first $2 million are satisfied at both general liability policies, then the additional $3 million's gonna come out of our umbrella, so anyway, just, it's good to know what states, you know, have vertical versus horizontal case law, and in particular, if you're doing work across the country, so I'm gonna kind of just leave that with you. Anything else on that, Justin? You know, I'm just trying to kind of keep it simple. No, that's it, just, you know, you prefer vertical, and if you're an option contractor, you prefer vertical, but it's all depending on your state. Yeah, great, okay, we're gonna flip the slides, and we're gonna stay in the general liability area, just like workers' comp, here's a waiver of subrogation endorsement that is a standard form. This is a specific waiver under general liability where you have to name, you know, the organization and the project. Again, as we talked about under workers' comp, it's good to have a blanket or automatic waiver of subrogation form written by contract, so you don't have to have these things issued each and every time, recognizing the automatic one will trigger if it's in the contract under general liability. And then we'll flip the slide again, and we talked about the general aggregate limit, you know, in terms of designated projects, where you'd have a separate set of liability limits for each and every project you do on the general liability. This is an example of a specific one where you name the project, which states that in the event of a claim, there is coverage available, even if you've exhausted your liability coverage on other, exhausted them via other claims on other projects. Again, this is a specific one. A preferred way is to have a blanket or an automatic when required by contract. But watch for this, you know, in your contracts. And just, I think, as a best practices, we think this is, we do this for all, really for all of our clients, so that it opens up their liability limits if we have multiple claims on multiple projects, you know, in any one year. And then we're gonna shift, and the last slide under general liability is back to this rigors liability, you know, where you've got property on a hook, could be panels, it could be anything, and particularly if you're self-performing the erection, and then the panels fall off the hook, you know, and damage, you know, some other property and damage the property that's on the hook. Here's an example of a property damage care custody control endorsement with a million limit, a million aggregate, and oftentimes they do put deductibles. In this example, a $25,000 deductible. So if you're self-performing erection, you want this type of liability coverage on your policy, or if you're subcontracting the erection, you want to make sure that your erector has similar coverage and maybe even higher limits than this, or making sure that their umbrella policy is going to drop down over this general liability. And the only other exception that we see is there are certain inland marine contractors, equipment, property insurers that'll put similar coverage onto the equipment floater, and if you see that, you just want to make sure that the limits, you know, are sufficient from your erector for the type of work, you know, that you're performing. Okay. Okay, we're going to move on, and we're going to stay a little bit in the liability area, talk just briefly about umbrella excess liability. What we see in our practice is typical limits, five million, five million in the aggregate. You know, we've seen requirements 10, 15, 25 million on large or mega type projects, but again, just making sure that your umbrella limits match the requirements of what's in the contract with your general contractor and or owner developer. Item B is a big thing today. You know, we talked about additional insured under general liability. Well, upstream, you know, the general contractors and the savvy owner developers are now demanding additional insured coverage to go into the umbrella. And the best way to do this is, again, kind of a blanket automatic one, if you can, and see if your insurance carrier can provide it on a automatic basis. If they can't, at least the ability to do it on a one-off project, and then obviously, you know, what is the cost to do that? But watch for this type of requirement in the umbrella section, as well as the primary non-contributory status, meaning if we've added these folks as additional insureds, they want our umbrella to go first before any other umbrella would, you know, come in, you know, from the general and or the owner. And again, the old waiver of subrogation. We're seeing this in, we're seeing this from large generals today, and again, larger, more sophisticated owner developers. And then if we page over, you're going to see an example of an additional insured endorsement that can be added to the umbrella that basically says, hey, if it's required by contractor agreement, you got it, okay? And keeping it simple, again, just like any of the automatic forms. And then if you go over again, the next page, you're going to see a waiver of subrogation that can be included in your umbrella, just like the others. This will be a specific one. If you can get an automatic one, yeah, that's golden. But the waiver of subrogation requirements are going into the umbrella section as well. We're going to shift again, next slide, and talk a little bit about professional liability, contractors, errors and omissions, for any design, design, build, or engineering services. This is becoming really critical, especially in the precast industry, if you do any type of design modification and or hiring any design professionals under your contract to, for the project. Typical limits, we've seen two million to five million each claim, and that's usually, that's coming from the general contractor and the owner-developer, two to five million in the aggregate. Deductibles typically start at about 5,000, you go up to 50, you go to 100, you know, you can go up depending on the size of your company and how much risk you want to retain in the event of a professional liability, you know, type claim. These policies are claims made, meaning that the coverage that's in place when the claim is made, not when the work was designed or performed, is the one that's going to trigger. So if you did, if you did a, designed a project in 2022, you perform the work in 23-24, but now in 2025 you've left, everything's done, and then a professional liability claim based on design error or omission comes, it's your policy in 2025 that's going to trigger. And that's why they, you'll see in these requirements under professional liability, you know, that they want to make sure that you've got coverage for a minimum of three to five years following the completion of the construction, or possibly up to the statute of repose. Now if you renew your professional liability, you know, coverage every year, not an issue. But if you decide that you're not going to do any design work, you know, going forward, I don't want to, I don't need the coverage, I don't want to pay the premium, then you've got to buy what we call in a reporting endorsement. It acts as a tail, you know, for, you know, the coming year. You can buy it in increments of one, three, sometimes five years. But watch the wording in this because if you're on the hook for any design issues through the statute of repose, if you're in a state that's got a 10-year statute, you got to make sure that you're going to be continually, you know, providing the, renewing the coverage, or if you stop this kind of design work, that you buy a tail to protect yourself. The last thing that has kind of come up, and actually it's a good thing, these professional liability contractors, you know, policies in recent years have provided retrofication and full P work coverage. And retrofication is an example, or let me just cite an example. Let's say that you were doing a parking garage, you know, type, and you produced X number of panels for the first floor. They got the first floor installed, and then, you know, the flooring above that, you know, over the panels started to go in. And then it was determined that, oh, the design was bad, we're off five to six inches, you know, pick a number, and we got to rip and tear all of the first floor panels out of the project. So the insurance industry did a good thing by now providing this retrofication type coverage. It's an endorsement, or it's an enhancement, in the, over the typical professional liability, you know. But basically says, if you find out during the course of the project something, if the design was bad, you had it installed, now you got to rip it out, they'll pay the cost of rectifying this, you know, or the cost of the rip and tear in putting it back in correctly. Now, faulty work is a little tougher to get in the professional liability area, but let's cite the same example. And, you know, you produce the panels, you know, the panels were put in on the first floor, the parking lot flooring was put in at the second, you then put in the second, they put in the second level of panels, and the job was just about done, and then all of a sudden something crashes down, and it's a construction defect. That's considered truly faulty work, and the liability coverage, you know, if you have a faulty work endorsement will trigger coverage for that. So, just, you know, it's just an aside, it's something to talk to your insurance agent broker about, you know, as you review and renew your professional liability. Let's flip over, you know, we've got a few minutes left, and talk a little bit about pollution liability for any environmental, you know, type exposure. It could be remediation. Just like professionally, you know, typical limits, two million, five million each claim, two million, five million in the aggregate. The deductibles are kind of the same, kind of start out in the 5,000 range, they go up to 50, or, you know, you could probably request a higher deductible to see how that would affect lowering the premium. Pollution liability comes in claims made, just like professional liability, you know, but there's been a trend over the last several years where you can obtain occurrence coverage, which is better because, basically, if you decide to get out of the, you know, business, or sell the business, or you're not doing work that's going to invoke an environmental type issue, you don't have to buy a tail. But also be wary of, you know, the potential statute of repose in that state, particularly if it's going to involve an environmental claim. In pollution, environmental coverage, you can add upstream parties as additional insureds, and in the professional liability, you know, I should have mentioned that you really can't. The insurance industry has not, you know, come to that. But when you do add additional insured coverage for a GC, an owner, a developer, it can be primary non-contributory, and we're starting to see waiver of subrogations, just like all these liability policies. Okay, we're getting close, and the last slide, the next to the last slide, is I just want to talk a bit briefly about property coverage, property of others, stored material, that kind of stuff, either at your location or other locations, you just be wary of that. And this type of thing is created by some of the supply chain, you know, issues, and with tariff, you know, things, you know, being uncertain, your contract might require you to be responsible for property of others that's within your scope. Installation floater coverage, that is really the materials and the labor that goes into installing, you know, materials on projects, could cover transit, could cover temporary storage, and certainly when it gets to the job site, and that one is not as important to you as a producer, but it is important to anybody that does erection, erects the, or installs the stuff on your behalf, and you should look at the contracts, and then ask your subcontractors for this type of coverage. And then last, but certainly not least, builders risk coverage. This is the coverage provided for the ground-up and or a renovation of a building. It's taken out either by the owner or the general contractor, and I think what's important here is you've got risk, you know, once your product, you know, hits their job site, and don't be afraid to ask for a certificate of insurance from the owner or the general contractor evidencing their builders risk coverage. Know to determine, you know, what the amount of coverage is they're providing for the project, what kind of deductible they have, look at your contract to see if you, as a producer, would be responsible for the deductible, even though you might not self-perform the erection. So this is an area where you don't want to, you know, be stuck later on, you know, when a major builder's risk claim occurs, and there's either not proper, the coverage is not proper, or the deductible is high, and you could, through contract verbiage, you could be responsible for the deductibles, unless you've stricken that out. And then a last slide, and we're coming to the end real quick. Other things that you can see in the base contracts and best rating, and best rates all, you know, insurers countrywide from A++ down to F, but most often the requirements in construction contracts will say that your insurers basically have to carry an A-8 or higher on the AEM best scale, and that's a good one. Anytime you get down into a B-plus or less, there's probably issues with the insurance carrier, the ability to pay claims, or worst-case scenario, the chance of a going out of business and the like, and you don't want to be on the hook, you know, with an insurance carrier that's gone out of business, and especially if you've got a liability claim that's pending. B, certificates of insurance, COIs today, yeah, they're going to ask for them, you know, in the contract. Today, they're looking that you provide copies of not only the COI, but the additional insured waiver of subrogation, endorsements, or anything else that they require before the work begins. C, we talked about the statute of repose from a completed operation standpoint. As Justin pointed out earlier, two to three years is typical if you can get it down to that, as opposed to, what, going out ten years on the statutes, yeah. And then D is important, we call these flow-down clauses, where, let's say you are contracted with the general contractor, and the GC says you got to have XYZ coverage, but the contract with the owner of the GC says you've got to have higher limits, a longer statute of repose, and they say this includes your subcontractors and your sub-tier contractors, so be wary of higher, more stringent insurance requirements between the owner-developer and the GCs, and then that's going to flow down to your subs, as I mentioned a moment ago. And then last but not least, nobody trusts anybody today in terms of coverage being in place. The COI is just a piece of paper, you know, it could have been issued six months ago, and that's why you're finding owner-developer GCs asking for 30-day notices of cancellation or material change in coverage, to make sure that they're notified if somebody does not renew their coverage, or they lapse their coverage, you know, from a non-payment of premium, or the renewal comes in and there's new, more restrictive changes in coverage. So that's why you're going to see some, a lot of the larger GCs pushing for item F. And we are right at or over our time frame, and I just want to thank everybody for being here today, and if there's questions we can take them now, Nicole, if not, we can handle them offline, too. Is that okay? Yes, absolutely. But first, on behalf of PCI, I'd like to thank Gary and Justin for a great presentation. We did have one question come through, so I'll go ahead and ask that. It's in regards to the CARES or Control Endorsement section, and it is, is the CARE in custody the same as a material installation floater? I'm sorry, could you read that back? I broke up. Is the CARE in custody the same as a material installation floater? No, no. The CARE custody control liability coverage says that this is liability for things that, let's take the erector, the crane operator, it's got a panel up on the hook, and the panel inadvertently falls, and it damages the panel itself. Liability, you need liability coverage for that type of an event, and you're going to get that through the CARE custody control coverage endorsement. Is that fair, Justin? Yeah, yeah, great. Perfect, wonderful. That is all the questions that have come through. So then, as a reminder, certificates of continuing education will appear in your account at www.rcep.net within 10 days. If you do have any further questions about today's webinar, please email marketing at pci.org. Thank you again, and have a great day.
Video Summary
In the PCI webinar on "Insurance Essentials for Precast Industry Professionals," Gary Semmer and Justin Schneider presented insights on navigating insurance complexities within the precast industry. They addressed key insurance elements like workers' compensation and general liability, emphasizing the importance of endorsements such as waivers of subrogation and additional insured provisions.<br /><br />The presenters highlighted ongoing and completed operations coverage, specifying that updated forms from organizations like ISO refine these coverages. They urged industry professionals to confirm that their coverage meets contract requirements to avoid breach of contract issues due to coverage discrepancies.<br /><br />For professional liability, the speakers explained the significance of ensuring coverage extends to the statute of repose, a crucial factor when projects span multiple years or face claims post-completion. They also discussed builders risk, installation floaters, and pollution liability, underscoring how critical it is to verify coverage continuity, especially for design-build projects.<br /><br />The session cautioned about potential coverage pitfalls like insufficient or inconsistent endorsements, urging collaboration with insurance brokers to tailor policies to business needs and contract demands. Additionally, Semmer and Schneider mentioned the flow-down clauses that transfer insurance requirements from general contractors to subcontractors, ensuring comprehensive coverage across all project levels.<br /><br />Attendees were encouraged to leverage resources such as COIs (Certificates of Insurance) and to maintain dialogue with their brokers for compliance assurance. The presentation concluded with a Q&A, addressing questions about the nuances of care custody control endorsements compared to material installation floaters, emphasizing their distinct roles in risk management.
Keywords
precast industry
insurance essentials
workers' compensation
general liability
professional liability
builders risk
endorsements
coverage continuity
flow-down clauses
risk management
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