Setting up on your own, or signing a contract that names a limit? Professional indemnity for engineering and design practices.

That description matters more the closer your work gets to the building site. Two policy wordings we use show it. The design and engineering one covers "design, advice, specification, calculation and formula", and leaves out supervision "normally the responsibility of a builder". The design and construct one counts project management and construction management as professional services. It also offers cover for limitation of liability, novated contracts, collateral warranties and proportionate liability terms, each as an option that applies only once it is on your schedule, the page of the policy that sets out your own cover. On the words alone, a practice that only designs fits the first more naturally, and one that project manages fits the second.

Practices change what they do. If yours adds an inspection service, check the wording first, because some of the design policies we can arrange exclude pest and pre-purchase inspections outright.

When you compare quotes, check where defence costs sit. Two policies with the same limit leave you with different amounts for the claim itself if only one takes defence costs out of that limit. The design policies we place differ here. Some pay defence costs on top, up to a further amount equal to the limit, and others count them inside it.

One engineers policy we place excludes any claim connected with combustible external cladding that is non-compliant or non-compliantly installed, applied or specified. Victoria's rules for engineers endorsed for building work allow that exclusion even in a policy that meets them. If your work touches cladding, ask about that clause before you sign a contract.

Contracts are often where the bigger figure comes from. Government and corporate tenders and head contracts commonly set a minimum limit, and a client can ask for cover to keep running for years after the job. Check the clause while you are still pricing the work.

Queensland. A registered engineer has a duty to take all reasonable steps to get and keep cover that fits the services they provide, with no set minimum. It does not reach an engineer for whom cover is unavailable or not economically viable, provided the client is told in writing before the agreement.

Victoria. Registration as an engineer brings no insurance duty on its own. The duty falls on an engineer endorsed for building work. A registration as a building surveyor, building inspector, quantity surveyor or building design draftsperson can bring you under the same rules. Their minimum is $1.5 million for each claim and for all claims in the policy period where defence costs sit inside the limit, or $1 million plus $500,000 for defence costs where they sit on top, with at least one automatic reinstatement, which refills the limit after a claim has used it up.

New South Wales. Adequate insurance is a condition of registration for design practitioners, professional engineers and building practitioners, with no dollar figure. Until 30 June 2027, a registered building practitioner is exempt from that requirement when providing a building compliance declaration or doing building work in relation to one. Engineers can also meet the rule through an approved arrangement, which means meeting the insurance requirements of a professional standards scheme body or a recognised engineering body. No figure is set, so you decide what is adequate, and the decision has to be a reasonable one. Weigh the work you do and how much of it, how long you have been registered, the claims it could bring, your finances and the policy's own limits and exclusions.

Architects carry a duty in all three states, and our guide to architects' professional indemnity requirements sets out who holds it and how much. Certifiers, surveyors, quantity surveyors and building designers each have their own rules, set out in our certifier and surveyor guide.

The first thing we work out with you is which of these rules you are under, in every state you work in. Then we look for a policy that meets each one and describes the work your practice does.

How a policy treats work you did before it started is on the main Professional Indemnity Insurance page.

Engineers, architects and project managers commonly need public liability beside professional indemnity, for injury and damage to property. Public Liability or Professional Indemnity: Do You Need Both? shows where one stops and the other starts.

Let the policy end when you stop practising, and a later claim about a finished design has nothing to answer it. The exception is a short window to report a claim, which two of those policies give only when the policy runs to its expiry date and is not renewed or replaced: 60 days on one, and a free 90 days on the other.

It is generally arranged for 12 months, 3 years or 7 years, when you retire, sell or merge. After a merger, takeover or sale, one design and construct policy we can arrange may extend cover for up to 84 months, on application and on any extra terms the insurer requires. Another runs only to the end of the policy period.

What to do about a job you already know has a problem is in what happens to your professional indemnity cover when you switch insurers or stop work.

When a client blames your design for a loss and the policy is one we look after, a specialist claims manager on our team manages the claim with the insurer. Your broker stays involved through it and keeps track of how it is going. We chase the insurer when it goes quiet and push back where your design and the policy support a different answer, so you are not left arguing your calculations alone. The decision is the insurer's, and we explain each step as it comes.