A bad pour is demolition, not a repair.
We insure concrete contractors in flatwork, foundations, tilt-up and pumping, written around irreversible work, washout and boom contact.
Tell us the situation.
One licensed human replies the same business day — not five agents, not an auto-responder. If the policy you have is already the right one, we will tell you.
We use this to quote and service your insurance, and we do not sell it or pass it to lead networks. Privacy policy.
Send us what you have. We’ll tell you if it’s right.
Your current policy paperwork, a renewal notice, or nothing at all. A licensed agent reads it and replies the same business day.
What concrete businesses actually need.
General liability
Third-party bodily injury and property damage. It is the line nearly every contract names by default.
Without it — A slab that fails takes with it everything built on top of it, and the damage is to the rest of the structure rather than to your concrete.
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 — Pours run long, the material is heavy and caustic, and placement crews work around moving equipment for the whole shift.
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 — Concrete placed to the wrong specification cures perfectly and is still wrong, and that is a professional failure rather than an accident.
Contractors pollution liability
Bodily injury, property damage and clean-up caused by a pollutant your work released: chemical drift, run-off, fuel spills. The standard general liability form excludes all of it.
Without it — Washout and slurry are strongly alkaline, and reaching a storm drain makes them a reportable discharge rather than a mess.
Commercial auto
Vehicles the business owns and the people who drive them for work.
Without it — Mixers and pump trucks are heavy vehicles on public roads, and a loss involving one is rarely small.
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 — Forms, screeds, power trowels and laser levels live on sites and are stolen from them.
General liability
Third-party bodily injury and property damage. It is the line nearly every contract names by default.
Without it — A boom, a chute or a truck damages the driveway, the landscaping or the building next door, none of which you were hired to touch. That is general liability, and the limit that matters is the one on the umbrella above it.
Umbrella & excess liability
Extra limit stacked above general liability, auto and employers liability. Usually the cheapest million dollars on the policy.
Without it — Commercial contracts require limits above primary, and a structural failure exhausts a primary limit without argument.
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 — Weather or vandalism destroys a pour mid-cure that has been paid for and cannot be invoiced.
Surety bonds
License, bid and performance bonds. A bond guarantees you will finish the job. It protects the other party, not you, which is the part most people get wrong.
Without it — License bonds condition the license, and contract bonds decide which jobs can be bid at all.
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 salesperson when the agency had no sales team at all, and now leads it. 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 defense on a claim your work caused, then look to you for it.
- Additional insured — completed operationsCG 20 37Extends that coverage 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 defense 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 — D.R. Horton, Pulte Group, Blackrock Homes and the rest of the national builders set the strictest terms a sub will see, and they do not negotiate them.
Contracts ask for more than these five. Every contract insurance requirement, explained, or paste your exhibit into the Contract Insurance Decoder to see the endorsement behind each clause.
How high do you work?
Third floor and above is a different account. The exposure is not only the fall — it is what gets dropped, who is underneath, and how far a tool travels before it lands. Carriers ask for a height limit and many stop at two or three stories, so work you take on because it was offered can quietly put a renewal into a market you were not in last year. Tell us the tallest job you do, not the usual one.
Residential or commercial?
Underwriters treat these as separate trades even when the work is identical. Residential carries construction-defect exposure that follows the job for years and a homeowner who sues; commercial carries bigger limits, tighter contracts and a general contractor who enforces them. A book that is mostly one prices very differently from a book that is evenly split, and the mix is usually the second question on the application.
What the insurance company will ask about your concrete business
We read 1 application the markets use for this kind of business and pulled out what they actually ask. Have these answers ready and a quote takes a day instead of a week, because nobody has to come back to you for the missing piece.
About the business
- What's a detailed description of what your company does and where you do it?
- How long have you been in business?
- Are you a sole owner, corporation, partnership, or something else?
- Has your business operated under any other names?
How you operate
- What percentage of your work is new construction versus renovation or repair on existing homes?
- What percentage of your work is residential versus commercial?
- Do you work on buildings over two stories?
- Do you hire sub-contractors, and if so, do you require them to have their own liability and workers' compensation insurance?
- Do you lease or rent equipment from others, or lease or rent equipment to others?
Safety and controls
- Do you have an employee whose job includes safety inspections, loss control, or professional consulting?
- What's your total annual payroll?
- How many full-time and part-time employees do you have?
Your history
- What insurance company covers you now, or covered you last?
- Have you ever had a claim, incident, or loss that might be covered by an insurance policy?
- Has anyone turned you down for standard insurance coverage?
Money and people
- What do you expect your total gross receipts to be over the next 12 months, broken down by insulation work (new and old homes) and any other work?
- What's your payroll broken down by operations, office staff, management, and other roles?
- What percentage of your revenue comes from work you do as a sub-contractor for other contractors?
Have these ready
- Your loss history from the last five years, including details of any claims or incidents
- Documentation showing your years of experience in the insulation contracting business
You answer what you can; a licensed agent fills the rest with you.
What our concrete clients ask us.
Why is concrete underwritten more carefully than other flatwork trades?
Because the work cannot be undone. If a slab is poured at the wrong elevation, at the wrong strength, or over inadequately compacted subgrade, the remedy is to break it out and start again, and by the time the defect is discovered, other trades have usually built on top of it. That makes the consequential damage far larger than the value of the concrete, which is the thing underwriters are actually pricing. It is also why the argument on a concrete claim is almost always about what is your work product and what is damage to somebody else's.
Is concrete washout really a pollution issue?
Yes, and it surprises people every time. Wash water from a mixer, pump or tools carries a very high pH, and if it reaches soil, a watercourse or a storm drain it is a discharge rather than a spill of something harmless. Most sites now require a contained washout area for exactly this reason. A standard general liability policy carries a pollution exclusion broad enough to catch it, so the coverage question is whether contractors pollution sits alongside the GL or does not exist.
Does pumping change my insurance?
Significantly. A boom pump introduces a large piece of mobile equipment, an overhead operation, and the single worst loss in the trade: boom contact with an energized power line. Placing and finishing is one appetite; operating pumps is another, and some carriers price or decline on that question alone. If you pump, say so at quote. If you hire in pumping, keep their certificates, because their payroll otherwise lands on your audit.
What limits do concrete subcontracts usually require?
A million per occurrence and two million aggregate on general liability is the common floor, with an umbrella between one and five million on commercial work, plus additional insured for ongoing and completed operations, primary and non-contributory wording, and a waiver of subrogation. On structural work a per-project aggregate is worth asking for, because one bad job otherwise exhausts the limit protecting every other job you have running.
What does a concrete insurance application ask for?
The applications for concrete businesses ask about 4 things above all: what's a detailed description of what your company does and where you do it; what percentage of your work is new construction versus renovation or repair on existing homes; do you have an employee whose job includes safety inspections, loss control, or professional consulting; what insurance company covers you now, or covered you last. Have your loss history from the last five years, including details of any claims or incidents and documentation showing your years of experience in the insulation contracting business ready and a quote takes a day instead of a week.
Commercial insurance is 96% of what we do — it is not a department here, it is the whole business. Not ready to talk? The guides answer the questions this page raises in more depth. Already insured with us and need a certificate or a policy change? Ask the service team rather than starting a quote — it is faster and it goes to the people whose job it is. We also write home and auto, which is usually cheaper alongside the business policy than apart from it.