[RE-wrenches] Insurance for solar design and inspections

[Dave Tedeyan]

Hi All,

I have an insurance question and am very curious about how others deal with
this, or don't. People will sometimes ask us to either do some design work
for a system that we will not be installing, or to inspect a system and
give my professional opinion about it. These are two separate work
situations.

Recently, our insurance agent brought it to our attention that we should
have insurance specifically for these kinds of work, and it is not
something that is covered under our general liability (contractors)
insurance.

Their recommendation for design work is to get "professional liability"
(errors and omissions) insurance. Even though I may do one or two designs a
year, we are looking at a roughly $12,000 policy. This would be meant to
cover us if I make a mistake in the design that leads to some sort of
failure or fire.

Their recommendation for the inspection type work is to get essentially a
home inspector insurance policy for about $2400 per year. Again, this is
something that we do a handful of times per year. This insurance is meant
to cover us if I inspect a system and miss something that then ends up
being a problem or a hazard.

With a brief conversation with a lawyer acquaintance, he thought that I may
be fine with out these insurances. It sounded like I should have something
in my service contracts that would essentially say something like "we will
do this work to the best of our ability", and then if something does go
wrong and the homeowner takes us to court, it is upon them to prove that we
missed something that a reasonable person would have caught. My business
manager does not like this because we could still have lots of lawyer fees
and have to show up in court if we were to get sued, even if the problem
was not caused by a lack of diligence on our part.

So my question to all of you is, do you have these insurances? Or do you
just not do designs and inspections unless you are actually turning some
wrenches on the site so that your general liability insurance covers your
work? Or, is this a case of our insurance agent putting ungrounded fears in
our head?

Thanks for your thoughts.
Cheers,
Dave

-- 
[image: Logo] <https://www.sungineersolar.com/>
Dave Tedeyan, P.E.
Owner | Sungineer Solar
p: he | him | his
a: 1653 Slaterville Rd. | Ithaca, NY 14850
w: www.sungineersolar.com <http://www.sungineersolar.com/>
c: (607) 270-0370
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