Contractor compliance
Contractor certificate of insurance: what to check before site entry
Most facilities collect a certificate of insurance once, at contract signing, and never look again. Six months later the policy has lapsed and nobody notices until something happens. Here is what a COI actually proves, what it does not, and the checks that matter at the gate.
A certificate of insurance is a summary, not the policy. It is issued by a broker, it is accurate on the day it is printed, and it confers no rights by itself. Treating it as proof of cover is the most common mistake in contractor management.
The endorsements that decide whether you are covered
Being named as an additional insured is what actually extends the contractor's cover to you. On a standard commercial general liability policy this comes through endorsements, and which one you have matters more than the certificate itself.
- CG 20 10 covers ongoing operations: work being performed on your site now.
- CG 20 37 covers completed operations: claims that arise after the contractor has finished and left. Many facilities hold the first and not the second, then discover the gap when a problem surfaces months later.
- Primary and non-contributory wording decides whose policy pays first. Without it, your insurer can require the contractor's insurer to share, which is not the position you thought you were in.
- Waiver of subrogation stops the contractor's insurer recovering from you after it pays a claim.
The five checks on every certificate
- Effective and expiry dates. The single most common failure is a certificate that was valid when filed and expired quietly afterwards.
- Limits against your contract. Compare the stated limits to what your agreement requires, not to what feels large.
- Named insured matches the company on site. Subsidiaries, trading names and labour-hire arrangements routinely produce a certificate for a different legal entity than the one whose people walk through your gate.
- Carrier rating. An A.M. Best rating tells you whether the insurer behind the paper can pay.
- Coverage types. General liability, workers compensation and auto are different policies with different limits, and a certificate showing one is not evidence of the others.
Why the timing is the real problem
Almost every facility can produce the certificates it collected. Very few can tell you which of them are valid this morning. The document is static; the cover is not. A policy cancelled for non-payment leaves your file looking complete while the contractor on your roof is uninsured.
That is why the check belongs at entry rather than in procurement. If expiry is only visible in a folder somebody opens quarterly, the gap between lapse and discovery is measured in months.
Prequalification is not the same check
Networks such as ISNetworld, Avetta and Veriforce qualify a contractor company, often months in advance, on safety statistics, training programmes and insurance on file. That is useful and it is not the same question. Prequalification tells you the company met a standard at review time. It does not tell you that the individual at your gate today is inducted, badged, and covered by a policy that is still in force. Both checks are worth running; they answer different things.
Where BeckonDesk fits
BeckonDesk stores contractor companies with an insurance expiry date, and certifications with their own expiry dates, so currency is a field on the record rather than a date buried in a PDF. The gate check happens against that record at sign-in rather than at contract signing. It does not read or parse the certificate for you: somebody still has to check the endorsements and limits above and enter what they found.
Related reading
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