What is Fire Protection Insurance?
Ready to Get a Quote or Talk to an Expert?
All throughout the United States, we are seeing a rise in the development of commercial buildings. From apartment complexes, to hospitals, to office buildings, the increase in buildings is continuing to grow. Fire suppression systems are legally required in all of these buildings, making fire suppression contractors needed more than ever. If you are in the business of fire protection, having the right fire suppression insurance is crucial.
What is a Fire Suppression Contractor?
A fire suppression contractor is an individual or company that works in the fire protection industry. These professionals are responsible for designing, installing and maintaining fire protection systems in buildings.
A fire suppression system is the most effective way to stop or prevent a fire from spreading in a building. The intricate ways that fire suppression contractors install the equipment can instantly bring moisture to the entire building within seconds, stopping any spread from occurring.
What is Fire Protection Insurance?
Fire protection insurance is an insurance policy that covers fire suppression systems made and installed by your company on any commercial building. This covers most installations, inspections, maintenance, and testing required for your suppression system.
Why Do I Need Fire Protection Insurance?
If you own a company that installs fire suppression systems, you are legally required to have insurance coverage. If your company installs sprinkler systems, smoke alarms, and fire extinguishers to a commercial building and they fail to work properly during a fire, your company will be responsible to pay for the damaged loss.
General Liability for Fire Protection
Contractors try their very best to avoid mistakes while making these installations. Making a mistake can result in having to start over your work, or worse, a lawsuit. If damages occur to the property that you are working on, you will be responsible for covering the damages. Without a general liability policy, your company could potentially go out of business for covering the damages out of pocket.
General Liability Add-Ons
In many lines of contractor work, there are select additions to a general liability policy. These add-ons can be extremely beneficial to your fire suppression company, especially if you are taking on larger jobs.
- Umbrella Liability - This addition will increase the liability limits on the initial general liability policy. If your fire suppression company is taking on larger jobs with higher risks, this will be something to strongly consider.
- Excess Liability - This add-on is similar to umbrella liability. Instead of increasing the general liability limits, it will provide coverage for losses that may have been above the limits.
- Professional Liability - Professional liability (also known as Errors and Omissions) will protect your company’s reputation against any negligence claims filed by clients. This includes copyright laws, libel, slander, and more.
- Pollution Liability - This add-on may be crucial to your fire suppression company. Because of the amount of water in the sprinkler systems, mold, mildew and fungus can be a common occurrence. The pollution liability addition will provide coverage if your clients are exposed to pollutants due to your installation.
What Are My Work Comp Exposures?
To install fire suppression systems, a fire suppression contractor has to do many hours of training and testing in order to obtain proper licensing to begin work. Although you and your team have been properly trained, there are still risks associated with the job.
When your employees are installing the suppression systems, the act of cutting into things, welding pieces together, and wiring things together can expose you to more risks. Also, since a lot of the work involved with fire protection is elevated, the risk of falls is greater than other industries.
If an employee is injured on the job without a workers’ compensation policy in place, it can mean trouble. You can be responsible to pay employee medical bills out of pocket, or worse, it can result in legal action. If you are in one of the many states that require workers’ compensation, you can be faced with a hefty fine or lawsuit for not following state orders.
Bonds
Bonds are put into place to ensure that contractors don’t leave a project unfinished. This holds the contractor liable to complete the job in a timely and professional manner. For the fire suppression line of work, surety bonds are deemed applicable in order for you to take on any public job. Some private jobs may request that you have a surety bond in place, as well.
When applying for bonds, carriers will take certain things into consideration. They will be looking at credit scores, past job history, company income, and more. The more experience, or higher income you have, the lower your bond rate will be.
Learn more about surety and performance bonds here.
Commercial Auto Insurance
If you or your employees will be driving equipment to and from locations, you will want to speak with an agent about a commercial auto insurance policy. Having a commercial auto policy in effect will provide protection to the vehicle, equipment, and driver. Without a commercial auto policy in force, all damages that must be paid for are your responsibility.
We all like to think that we are in control while driving. Unfortunately, all it takes is one irresponsible driver on the road to change things instantly. Ensuring the safety of your vehicles and equipment while enroute can be backed by a commercial auto insurance policy.
Benefits and Payroll:
As the owner of a fire suppression business, there are many responsibilities involved to be and stay successful. At Alliance Insurance Group, we aim to help with your insurance, benefits, payroll and HR needs! Having a high employee satisfaction rate can help ensure that your employees continue to work well on the job.
We can help you find the right employee benefits plan for the hard-working individuals that keep your business going. We also have a simple system to help distribute payroll to your employees. No more need to sit and calculate your employees pay, we can take care of it for you.
If you would like to learn more about fire suppression insurance, or how our payroll, benefits and HR team can help you, fill out the form below. One of our agents will reach out to you shortly. You can also call the mainline at (303) 279-9700.