Hot work starts fires hours after the crew has gone.
Commercial insurance for welders and fabricators, shop and mobile, written around hot work permits and the fire watch a customer contract demands, the fire that starts hours after the crew has left, and welds that carry load long after the invoice is paid.
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.
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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 welding and fabrication 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 spark that smoulders in a cavity and ignites after the crew leaves burns a building you were repairing.
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 — Burns, eye injury and metal fume exposure are the trade's own injuries, on top of the lifting everything else involves.
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 — A weld that fails under load is a structural failure, and whether it met the specified procedure is the whole claim.
Commercial property
Buildings and contents, valued at what it costs to rebuild today rather than what you paid.
Without it — The shop holds gas, stock and plant, and it is the asset a fire takes first.
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 — Machines, positioners and mobile rigs are high-value, portable, and stolen off trucks and sites.
Commercial auto
Vehicles the business owns and the people who drive them for work.
Without it — A mobile rig is a truck carrying compressed gas, which changes what an accident looks like.
Equipment breakdown & spoilage
Covers the walk-in, the compressor and the line when they fail from the inside. A mechanical or electrical breakdown is excluded by property policies, and the stock that thawed goes with it.
Without it — Shop machinery fails electrically and mechanically, and property policies treat that as maintenance rather than a loss.
Umbrella & excess liability
Extra limit stacked above general liability, auto and employers liability. Usually the cheapest million dollars on the policy.
Without it — A structural failure or a building fire is not a claim a primary limit was sized for.
Business income
Replaces the profit and pays the ongoing bills while a covered loss keeps you closed. It is the part of a fire claim that is not the building.
Without it — A shop fire stops fabrication and delivery while payroll and lease continue.
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 welding and fabrication business
We read the applications the markets use for businesses in this field 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 kind of contracting work do you do
- When did you start this business
- What licenses do you hold
- Have you ever operated under other business names
- What are your annual gross sales
How you operate
- How many people do you employ
- What is your total annual payroll
- Do you hire subcontractors
- Do you work on buildings higher than two stories
- Do you have a formal safety program in place
Safety and controls
- How do you screen or check out new equipment operators
- Do you collect and keep certificates of insurance from all your subcontractors
- Who reviews and maintains those certificates
Your history
- Who is your current insurance company, or your last one if you don't have coverage now
- Do you have any claims over $5,000 from the last few years
Money and people
- What other locations or job sites do you operate from
Have these ready
- Your last five years of claims history from your current insurer, called loss runs
- Certificates of insurance from your subcontractors showing your company as additional insured
- Copies of any rental agreements for equipment you lease from others
You answer what you can; a licensed agent fills the rest with you.
What our welding and fabrication clients ask us.
Why do contracts make such a fuss about hot work permits?
Because delayed ignition is real and expensive. Sparks and slag travel further than people expect, lodge in cavities and insulation, and smoulder for a long time before flaming, which is why permit procedures require a fire watch continuing after the work stops, not just during it. Some policies now make the procedure a condition of coverage rather than a recommendation, so it is worth knowing whether yours does before an incident rather than after.
Is mobile welding underwritten differently from shop work?
Very. Shop work happens in a space you control, with your own fire protection and your own housekeeping. Mobile work happens on somebody else's premises, frequently on their equipment, sometimes in agricultural or industrial settings full of things that burn. Most welders do both, and the split matters: an application that says only "welding" will be rated for the harder half.
Does certification help me get insured?
It helps the conversation. Procedure and welder qualification to a recognized code is evidence that the work is repeatable and that a failure investigation will have something to point at. It does not remove the exposure, and it does not substitute for errors and omissions coverage on structural work, but it does distinguish a fabricator from an operator with a machine, and underwriters read it that way.
What is the exposure on structural or pressure work?
It is the largest one on this page and it behaves like completed operations everywhere else: the weld passes inspection, the job closes, and the failure arrives under load years later. Structural steel, pressure retaining work and anything lifting or supporting people are the classes carriers underwrite most carefully, and where they are a meaningful share of the work the account belongs with a carrier that writes it deliberately rather than one that took it by default.
What does a welding and fabrication insurance application ask for?
The applications for welding and fabrication businesses ask about 4 things above all: what kind of contracting work do you do; how many people do you employ; how do you screen or check out new equipment operators; who is your current insurance company, or your last one if you don't have coverage now. Have your last five years of claims history from your current insurer, called loss runs and certificates of insurance from your subcontractors showing your company as additional insured 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.