Vendor insurance requirements by trade: roofing, landscaping, pool, mold remediation

Most portfolios run one requirement set for every vendor. $1M per occurrence, $2M aggregate, workers comp, done.

That number is simultaneously too strict for the landscaper cutting grass and too loose for the roofer working above occupied units. Requirements should follow the risk, and the risk differs by trade in ways that are specific rather than vague.

What actually drives the difference

Four factors, and they explain nearly every requirement decision:

Height and fall exposure. Working above ground raises both injury severity and third-party risk.

Water. Any trade that can introduce water into a building envelope creates a claim that compounds over months rather than resolving in a day.

Occupied space. Work in an occupied unit or above one puts residents and their property in the loss.

Whether the work can fail later. A repair that fails in six months is a completed operations claim, which is a different endorsement from the one most certificates carry.

Roofing carries the highest exposure and the most common exclusion

Height, water, and work directly above occupied units. Three of the four factors at once.

Worth requiring above your baseline: higher general liability limits, and umbrella coverage rather than treating it as optional.

The specific thing to check, which catches people: a roofing exclusion on a roofer's general liability policy. It happens. Some carriers exclude the insured's core operation, and the certificate looks entirely correct because the limits at the top of the page are right. The exclusion is in the description of operations field or in the policy itself.

Also the completed operations endorsement matters more here than anywhere. A roof repaired in March that leaks in November, causing interior damage, is a completed operations claim. A vendor providing only CG 20 10, ongoing operations, is not covered for that.

Mold remediation needs pollution coverage that general liability excludes

This is the trade where a standard requirement set fails most completely.

Most commercial general liability policies contain a pollution exclusion, and mold is commonly treated as a pollutant. So a mold remediation contractor with $1M per occurrence general liability may have no coverage at all for the specific work you hired them to do.

What you actually need is contractors pollution liability, which is a separate policy or endorsement.

This is also the trade where speed pressure is highest, which is a bad combination. In our own portfolio a project manager needed a mold remediation vendor for a high-value client and the phrase they used was that each day they were not working, liability was climbing. That pressure is exactly when a compliance shortcut gets taken.

Pool work adds a statutory and a chemical dimension

Two things a general requirement set misses.

Chemical handling is a pollution question again, and a pool vendor's general liability may exclude it.

Pool work is also frequently licensed at the state or county level, and the license is a separate document from the insurance. A pool contractor with perfect coverage and a lapsed license is a compliance failure your COI review will never catch, because you were looking at the wrong document.

Pool inspections are also where the documentation trail matters, since a health inspector may ask for a year of logs.

Landscaping is where over-requiring costs you vendors

The trade most portfolios over-insure, and it has a real cost.

Ground-level work, no water into the envelope, limited occupied-space exposure. The genuine risks are auto liability, because they drive trucks and trailers constantly, and property damage to irrigation and hardscape.

Requiring the same limits as a roofer means small landscaping companies cannot clear your bar, so you lose the local vendor who does good work for a reasonable price and end up with fewer options at higher cost.

Where to be firm instead: auto liability with hired and non-owned auto, since their exposure is vehicular.

Three tiers will cover almost every vendor list

Rather than one set or twenty:

IDCore evaluates requirement sets per tenant and per risk tier, with owner add-on bundles evaluated server-side, because some owners impose requirements above the manager's baseline and that should not live in somebody's memory.

One rule that applies to every tier

Workers compensation, or a documented exemption.

A sole proprietor may be legitimately exempt in your state. That is a decision you get to make deliberately, not a blank field to ignore, because if their uninsured helper is hurt on your property the question of who employed them gets expensive quickly.

Also check employer liability limits, which are separate from statutory coverage. Statutory pays the employee's benefits. Employer liability responds to the suit that follows.

Start by sorting your vendor list into three tiers

That is an hour of work and it is the highest-value hour available here.

Then check whether your current requirement set is right for the top tier, and whether it is excluding vendors you want in the bottom one.

Which tier are your mold and roofing vendors currently being checked against?