Hello everyone
I’ve been poking around here for awhile now and do occasionally post.
I’m looking into getting my G.C. license and have run into an insurance catch 22. I’ve been working as a designer for a couple of years and before that I spent a few years as a carpenter on a high end remodeling team.

As a designer, several of my customers have been interested in having me also be their contractor. I’d also like to have a little more control over the projects as well. Though it seems that liability insurance companies’ would rather the tasks be performed by two separate people. As a single person doing both design and construction my liability insurance is 10X more expensive than it would be if I didn’t design, and it is 4X more expensive than just my professionally liability for designing. My problem is that I can’t afford this exponential increase at this stage of my business.

I’m curious if anyone else has run into this and what you did to figure it out. What do (or did) you design build guys do when you were just getting started. It’s tempting to just omit the fact that I also design, but I’m not sure I want to be that exposed. Any thoughts, experiences or antidotes would be greatly appreciated.

I apologize if it sounds like I’m whining, but I suppose we all sound like that when the topic of liability arises.

Thanks, Brian

NOW WHERE IN THE HECK DID I LEAVE MY HAMMER?