A contractor in Doral installs a shower pan. Eighteen months later it fails, water reaches the framing and the unit below, and the owner files a claim against him.
His general liability responds to the damage in the downstairs unit. It does not pay to tear out and redo his own shower pan.
That distinction is the most consequential thing in a contractor’s policy, and most contractors learn it during a claim rather than before one.
Your Own Work
General liability covers damage you cause to other people and their property. It does not cover the failure of your own work.
If you drop a sheet of drywall through a window, that is third-party property damage and the policy responds. If the drywall you installed fails and has to be torn out and redone, that is faulty workmanship and standard general liability is not built to pay for it.
The distinction holds even when the amounts are large. Construction defect claims surface months or years after a job closes, and by then the contractor is being asked to stand behind work with a policy never designed for the purpose.
Two things follow. Your workmanship is a business risk you carry, which argues for doing the work right rather than buying more insurance. And on design-adjacent work where you are making professional judgments rather than only installing, professional liability is a separate conversation.
Work Performed by Subcontractors
Many contractor forms carry an independent contractors exclusion, removing coverage for work performed by anyone who is not your employee.
If it is on your policy, a claim arising from a sub’s work may fall outside it entirely — while the client still looks to you, because you are the one who signed the contract.
This runs alongside the audit problem. An uninsured sub’s payroll gets charged to your policy at his class rate, months later. One exclusion costs you at claim time and the other at audit time, and both trace to the same missing certificate.
Trades and Heights You Did Not Declare
Coverage follows the description of what you do.
A policy written for interior finish that does not name roofing, structural work, or work above a stated height may not respond to a claim arising from it. Exterior work over fifty feet is a common explicit exclusion.
This happens gradually and innocently. A contractor takes one job slightly outside his usual scope, then another, and the policy still describes the business as it was two years ago.
Employee Injuries
A worker hurt on your job is not a general liability claim. That is workers’ compensation.
In Florida, construction requires coverage at one employee, not four, and in most cases that includes the owner. Exemptions exist with narrower rules than non-construction — an ownership percentage requirement and a cap on how many officers can be exempt at once.
An exemption also does nothing for the person exempted. An owner who exempts himself and gets hurt has no benefits, and most personal health plans exclude work-related injuries.
Damage to the Property You Are Working On
This is subtle and it produces arguments.
General liability forms contain exclusions relating to property in your care, custody, or control, and to the particular part of real property you are working on.
The practical version: damage to the specific thing you were working on when the damage occurred is frequently excluded, while damage to other parts of the property is covered. The shower pan is yours. The ceiling below it is not.
Installation floaters and builders risk address different pieces of this, and which one you need depends on the work.
Your Tools and Equipment
General liability covers neither. Tools, equipment, and anything in a service truck are an inland marine question, and tool theft in Florida is common enough that this is worth sizing properly rather than accepting a nominal limit.
Equipment you rent is its own question again, and rental agreements frequently make you responsible for it.
Pollution
Solvents, fuels, adhesives, sealants, silica dust, and lead and asbestos in older buildings are pollutants under most liability forms, and general liability carries pollution exclusions.
For contractors working in older Florida housing stock, lead and asbestos exposures are real and the exclusions are explicit.
Employment and Contractual Exposures
Employment claims from your own staff — wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, wage and hour — are employment practices claims and belong elsewhere.
Contractual liability you assumed by signing an indemnity clause may reach further than your policy does. Construction contracts contain broad indemnity provisions routinely, and reading the clause before signing is cheaper than discovering its scope afterward.
Professional Liability
Design-build work, engineering judgments, specification decisions, and anything where you are advising rather than installing sit outside general liability.
A contractor who provides drawings, selects a system, or makes an engineering call has a professional exposure, and it needs its own coverage.
Cyber
Contractors run on estimating software, project management platforms, and banking. Fraudulent payment redirection during a project — where someone impersonating a vendor or a client sends new wire instructions — is a recurring problem in construction and is not a general liability claim.
What Contractors Should Check
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Do you understand that your own work is not covered when it fails?
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Is there an independent contractors exclusion on your general liability?
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Does the policy name every trade you currently perform?
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Is there a height limitation, and does your work stay inside it?
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Do you carry workers’ compensation, or are you relying on exemptions that may not hold?
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Do you have current certificates from every subcontractor?
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Are your tools and equipment covered off the premises?
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Do your contracts contain indemnity clauses, and does anything cover them?
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If you do any design-build work, do you carry professional liability?
Contractor Insurance in Florida
Prestige Insurance Group writes contractors and artisan trades across Miami, Hialeah, Doral, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando, and Tampa, including trades that are difficult to place.
Send your declarations page and one of your contracts. Whether the policy covers what you actually do, and whether it meets what you have already signed, are both answerable from those two documents.
Call the office nearest you.
Miami: 305-969-8776 Orlando: 407-993-2331
General information only, not legal advice. Coverage forms, exclusions, and endorsements vary substantially by carrier and by policy, and whether a specific loss is covered depends on the facts and the policy in force. Florida workers’ compensation requirements and exemption rules are subject to change; confirm current requirements with the Florida Division of Workers’ Compensation. Refer to your actual policies and contracts for the terms that apply to your business.
