Structural or not, and how many storeys. Everything follows those two answers.
Commercial insurance for framing and carpentry contractors — placed on the two questions that decide the market: whether the work is structural, and how high it goes.
Tell us the situation.
A licensed human replies the same business day — not an auto-responder, and not five producers calling at once. We shop it across our carriers and tell you if the policy you already have is the right one.
We use this to quote and service your insurance, and we do not sell it or pass it to lead networks. Privacy policy.
What carpentry and framing businesses actually need.
General liability
Third-party bodily injury and property damage — the line nearly every contract names by default.
Without it — Framing failures are structural failures, and the damage runs to everything built on top of your work.
Workers compensation
Required in almost every state the moment you have employees. Priced on payroll and class code, which is why the class code is worth arguing about.
Without it — Falls from height are the defining injury in framing, and above two storeys the rate and the appetite both change sharply.
Contractors errors & omissions
Covers faulty workmanship and professional mistakes — the cost of the work itself being wrong, which general liability excludes by design.
Without it — General liability pays for the damage your framing caused and nothing toward the framing itself being wrong.
Commercial auto
Vehicles the business owns and the people who drive them for work.
Without it — Crews, lumber and equipment move between sites daily.
Inland marine & equipment
Tools, equipment and property in transit. It picks up exactly where commercial property stops, which is the moment the item leaves the building.
Without it — Nail guns, saws, compressors and staging are stolen from sites constantly.
Umbrella & excess liability
Extra limit stacked above general liability, auto and employers liability. Usually the cheapest million dollars on the policy.
Without it — Residential developers and general contractors require limits above primary before a crew starts.
Builders risk
Covers a structure while it is going up, and ends at completion. Not the same as the contractor’s general liability.
Without it — A frame standing open is exposed to wind and fire before it is ever dried in.
Joe Gorman
Co-Founder | President of Commercial Lines
Came up in construction, on site and in the office, then moved into sales. Went out on a limb to become Boring’s first dedicated producer when the agency had no producers at all — and now leads the producer team. Landscaping is the class he writes most: grounds maintenance, tree work, irrigation and the spray operations that push an account out of preferred appetite.
Five endorsements, and a certificate is none of them.
A certificate is evidence a policy existed the day it was printed — it says so on its own face. The coverage a contract is really asking for lives on the policy as named endorsements, and this is the list they come from.
- Additional insured — ongoing operationsCG 20 10Covers the general contractor for claims arising from your work while the job is in progress.Without it: They fund their own defence on a claim your work caused, then look to you for it.
- Additional insured — completed operationsCG 20 37Extends that cover to claims arising after your work is finished.Without it: The claim arrives years later, when the policy that should have carried it has renewed several times. Cheaper policies often exclude this or do not offer it.
- Primary and non-contributoryCG 20 01Puts your policy first and stops your insurer demanding a contribution from theirs.Without it: Two insurers argue about who pays while the defence waits.
- Waiver of subrogationCG 24 04Stops your insurer recovering from the party you agreed in writing to protect.Without it: Your insurer pays, then sues your customer, which ends the relationship.
- Per-project aggregateCG 25 03Gives each job its own general aggregate instead of sharing one across the year.Without it: Another project’s claims quietly spend the limit that was meant to cover this one.
Tract, condominium and apartment work is the exception that undoes all five — an exclusion for multi-unit residential removes the coverage before any endorsement can apply. What national homebuilders require covers that in full.
What carpentry and framing operators ask us.
Why does structural versus non-structural matter so much?
Because they are different risks wearing the same word. Non-structural carpentry — interior partitions, trim, cabinetry, finish work — fails as a cosmetic or minor defect. Structural framing carries the building, and a defect is a structural claim with everything built above it attached. Carriers price and accept the two very differently, and an application that says only "carpentry" has not answered the question an underwriter needs answered.
What changes above two storeys?
The fall exposure, and with it the market. Single-storey and two-storey framing is placeable widely; above that, fewer carriers write it, workers compensation costs more, and some markets exclude it outright. Height is not something to round down on an application — it is checkable, and a claim on a third floor under a policy written for two is a conversation about misrepresentation.
Is framing tract homes harder to place than custom?
Considerably, and it is the same reason carriers dislike all residential tract work: a framing defect repeated across a development arrives as a class action or a homeowners association claim rather than as one dispute. Many contractor policies carry a multi-unit and tract housing exclusion that removes the work entirely, so a framer doing production housing needs the exclusion looked for specifically rather than assumed away.
What materials do underwriters ask about?
What you frame in and what you are framing. Wood-frame construction, engineered lumber, light-gauge steel and mass timber sit in different appetites, and the occupancy above matters too — multifamily wood-frame is treated very differently from a single-family custom home. It is worth describing the work precisely, because the imprecise version is the one that gets declined.