Paving contractors on city and county jobs are usually asked to carry general liability, commercial auto and workers compensation, and on larger or busier jobs an umbrella or excess layer above them. The bid documents decide the exact list, so the real work is matching what they ask for to what you already carry.
What city and county owners usually ask for
A public owner is buying work done in a street, a parking facility or a right of way, with the public passing close by. Its insurance article is written to make sure someone solvent answers if a driver, a pedestrian or a utility is hurt or damaged, and that your own crew is not an unfunded loss. In our experience placing coverage for paving, sealcoating and striping firms, the same short list appears again and again:
- General liability for injury and property damage caused by your operations and your finished work.
- Commercial auto for the dump trucks, distributor trucks and pickups that move material and equipment.
- Workers compensation for employees injured on the job.
- An umbrella or excess layer, where the job’s risk or size calls for limits above the primary policies.
Some documents add pollution, professional or contractor’s equipment requirements. Treat anything beyond the four above as something to confirm per bid, not as a rule.
Where the requirements live in the bid package
The requirement is rarely in one place. It can sit in the instructions to bidders, the general conditions, a special provision and the sample contract, and the strictest wording controls. Pull out every mention of insurance, additional insured, waiver of subrogation, notice of cancellation and primary and noncontributory wording before you price the job.
Our habit is to put the insurance article side by side with the declarations pages and ask three plain questions. Does each required line exist on your program? Do the limits the document names fit what you carry? Does your policy allow the endorsements the document demands? Our post on reading a paving contract walks through where those clauses hide.
The endorsements that cause the delay
Carrying the right line of coverage is only half of it. The delays on municipal work come from endorsements. A city may ask to be an additional insured, to have its coverage treated as primary, to receive a waiver of subrogation, or to be told if the policy is canceled. Each of these is added to your policy by endorsement, and each takes time.
That is why the certificate should be requested early. A certificate only reports what the policy already says, so an endorsement that has not been issued cannot be certified.
Sub-level work and who shows what
If you are the sealcoating or striping sub under a paving prime, the city’s insurance article usually flows down through the prime’s subcontract. Expect to show your own policies and sometimes to name both the prime and the owner. Our pages on sealcoating and parking lot striping cover how those trades are written.
Getting ready before you bid
Gather four things before the first public bid of the season: your current declarations pages, a recent certificate, the bid’s insurance article and a list of the owners and entities the owner wants named. Hand them to an agency that places paving risks and ask for a written gap list.
If an umbrella is needed, start early. The umbrella has to sit over the policies beneath it, as we explain in umbrella and excess liability for paving contractors. The rest of the program is laid out under paving contractor insurance.
A walk-through of a typical municipal parking lot or street bid
Picture a county awarding a resurfacing contract. The bid package asks for a certificate showing general liability with the county added as an additional insured, commercial auto for the haul trucks, and workers compensation for the crew. The special provisions add a notice-of-cancellation requirement, and the general conditions ask that your coverage be primary to the county’s own.
Each of those lines can be answered from your existing program, but the additional insured, primary and notice wording are endorsements. If any of them is missing, the certificate your agency issues will not truthfully show it. The fix is to ask for the endorsements as soon as you decide to bid, not once you are the low bidder.
The same exercise works for a city street program, a school district lot or a park path. The owner changes, the pattern does not: list what the documents ask for, find where your policies already answer it, and mark every item that needs a change.
When you have a city or county bid in hand, request a quote and send us the insurance article; we will mark each requirement against your program before the bid is due.