The Expert Podcast

If you're getting a surety bond or insurance policies for your construction related business, you may want to look at. Coverages for job site thefts. There's been a huge spike in construction site, burglaries theft and materials going missing Oh, look it used to be enough to get coverage for damage where if you have a. a stack of lumber and a forklift drives into it and damages some lumber materials. That should be enough. Nowadays because of the fact that there's economic problems that people are stealing more And also that laws are not prosecuting criminals as much as it used to There's more of a. Kind of open. mentality about. Crime theft burglary. There's more people stealing lumber Plus the fact that building materials have gone up in price. to before that used to cost a dollar 99 Now it could be a six or $7 item. A bucket of paint that was 20 bucks four years ago and now it could be a hundred dollars So. those losses not only are more frequent but each one now has a higher cost for the contractor or the builder. It's important to have insurance And also to understand the terms and conditions of your insurance policy. Most job site materials coverage extends a certain number of feet from the actual construction site.

So if you store your materials within 50 feet or a hundred feet, your policy may cover it. If you go farther away if you store your Your materials, you go to or 300 feet away. They may not be covered So little things like where the materials are stored might make a difference Also putting up. a security fence around your property might be an expense but it might keep you from losing. You know hundreds or thousands of dollars and the fact that you don't want to put in an insurance claim for a small amount because that could either cause you to lose coverage get non-renewed or have a higher premium next time around. Make sure that you're practicing Good job site security from. the standpoint of keeping things bundled up If you have a. A stack of lumber that has banding around it Leave that banding on it until you need to start pulling from that lumber pile.

If you have let's say paint that's palletized and shrink wrapped leave is shrink wrapped As long as you can keeping the items inside in a garage. in a shed in a storage compartment is also best practice and certainly your tools. Make sure you have either a good job site. security box or taken with you. If you have a. construction trailer. A towable trailer that has all your tools in it. then that's that's a problem waiting to happen Somebody could back up and steal your trailer or break into it and just walk off with a bunch of tools You can see the tools behind us here. You know between what we have in our office and our job sites. You know there's eight nine $10,000 worth of tools and feeds can steal those and pawn them very easily to get their next fix.

Getting another pair of eyes on your job site security might be helpful Your insurance broker can help you with that. They can give you some best practices and also tell you what are the types of claims they're seeing because there might be new types of theft. That you may not be aware of that. You don't want to be the first person to be a victim of it You want to know about it from other areas of the country and not have it affect you financially because not only do you have to pay the costs but you're probably going to have to shut down your job site to wait for the replacement materials to show up or the replacement tools before you can get back on your job schedule.