General liability insurance.

General liability is rarely required by law, but it is required by almost everyone you work for. A general contractor will not let a sub on site without a certificate showing it, a landlord asks for it before handing over keys, and many permits and trade licenses want proof of it on file. So the law seldom makes you carry it. The contract does. What changes the answer is your state and your trade: some licensing boards require it for certain contractors, and public work and government contracts almost always do.

How much general liability coverage to carry usually comes from the contracts you sign rather than from a rule of thumb. Most commercial contracts name a per occurrence limit and an aggregate limit and ask to see both on the certificate. A general contractor’s bid package, for example, lists the limits the sub must carry before the job can start. Read that page before you buy, and bring it to the quote. What changes the answer is the size of the jobs you take and who you work for. Larger contracts and public work tend to ask for higher limits, and an umbrella policy is how many businesses reach them.

A certificate of insurance does not make anyone an additional insured on its own. The certificate is a snapshot that shows the coverage you carry on the day it is issued. Additional insured status comes from an endorsement, a form attached to the policy that changes who the policy protects. A general contractor who asks to be named on your policy is asking for the endorsement, and the certificate should then reference it. What changes the answer is the wording of your policy. Some policies carry a blanket endorsement that covers anyone your contract requires, and some need each additional insured added one at a time.

General liability generally does not cover the cost of redoing your own faulty workmanship. It responds to damage your work causes to other people and their property. If a fitting you installed fails and floods the client’s finished floor, the floor is typically covered and the fitting is not. That line, called the your work exclusion, is the most misread part of the policy and the one we point out on every policy we review. What changes the answer is who did the work. Damage caused by a subcontractor’s work is often treated differently, and the policy’s wording on subcontracted work decides how.

Subcontractors affect a general liability policy in two ways: what you pay and what you are exposed to. Carriers ask what you spend on subs each year, and subs without their own insurance are often charged to your policy as if they were your payroll. If a sub with no coverage injures someone on your job, the claim can land on your policy. Collecting a certificate from every sub before they start is the habit that keeps both the premium and the exposure down. What changes the answer is whether your subs carry their own general liability with limits at least as high as yours, and whether your contracts require it.

A general liability claim can happen after the job is finished. The part of the policy called completed operations responds to damage that shows up once your work is done and paid for. A water heater installed last spring that fails next winter and damages the ceiling below is the classic example. What matters is when the damage happened, not when the work was done, so the policy in force on the date of the damage is the one that responds. What changes the answer is whether you keep coverage in place without a gap, because a lapse between policies can leave finished work uncovered when the damage finally appears.