Vincent Sanfilippo

Many factors influence our insurance strategy. At the beginning of your partnership with Leif, we’ll conduct a comprehensive risk assessment. Based on our findings, we might recommend:

• General liability
• Commercial property
• Workers’ compensation
• Equipment insurance
• Commercial auto
• Professional liability
• Builder’s risk
• Pollution liability
• Other policies that fit your risk exposures

Most contractors must also have surety bonds to work on government projects.

Navigating contracts can be tricky. To avoid litigation and disputes, it’s important to make sure every contract is airtight.

To minimize the chance of legal disputes:

• Ensure the contract defines the parties to the contract, and the project’s responsibilities, scope, timeline, deliverables, and quality standards.
• Include risk allocation mechanisms like indemnification clauses, limitation of liability or hold harmless language, and dispute resolution procedures.
• Clearly outline insurance requirements for all subcontractors and partners. Require Certificates of Insurance from every subcontractor.
• Specify additional insured requirements covering ongoing and completed operations.
• Prohibit coverage exclusions for subcontracted work or indemnification claims pertaining to the contracted party’s employees.
• Establish clear procedures for change orders and scope changes.
• Keep meticulous records of correspondence, approvals, change orders, and project progress.

A Certificate of Insurance is a document verifying your insurance coverage. It provides proof to clients and other partners that your business has adequate insurance. Clients might ask you to provide a COI before starting work or entering into a contract.

It’s crucial to not only collect COIs from your subs, but also verify that the coverage complies with your contracts. If your subs don’t have adequate coverage, liability could fall back on you if an incident happens.

Develop a consistent process for collecting, verifying, and tracking COIs. If you only work with a few subs, you can do this manually – but you know better than anyone that time quickly adds up. If you’re ready to automate your COI management, Leif can help.

Every year, thousands of construction workers are injured on the job. Even if your employees know how to work safely, incentives like finishing quickly can lead them to make unsafe choices.

That’s why every business needs a safety program with documented policies and procedures, regular training, incident reporting, and an investment in safe equipment.

In addition to the invaluable outcome of saving lives, a safety program also benefits your business by:

• Increasing productivity
• Improving employee morale and reducing turnover
• Strengthening your company’s reputation
• Reducing your legal liability
• Improving your claims experience, reducing insurance costs over time

Controlling insurance spend is a top priority for contractors. The best way to control costs is to get a thorough, accurate, and real-time view of your business’s risk.

How?

By partnering with construction experts to assess your risk and collect data using fleet management technology.

This information helps you improve safety, streamline maintenance, and boost efficiency. It also qualifies you for discounts based on safe operator behavior – and it’s only available from Leif.

A bond is a three-party contract between you (the principal), your client (the obligee), and the surety provider. If you fail to perform according to the contract terms, the surety will step in to fulfill your obligation.

In this event, the surety provider will expect to be made whole via the indemnity agreement, which is both a corporate and personal guarantee from you to the surety.

Surety bonds can boost your revenue and fuel your growth as a general contractor by:

• Allowing you to bid on larger and more complex projects
• Improving your reputation
• Helping you build the company’s financial strength and generational wealth

Bonds are required on all public projects and many private commercial projects. Our in-house bond underwriters can help you secure the bonds you need and increase your bonding capacity to win bigger projects.