Posts: 0
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2006
15th March 2010, 09:23 AM
I wondered why I had dredged up insurance and then my renewal turned up; and every year I go through the whats it for question.
I get public and products liability but I struggle to imagine where I would need it. Is it that I leave my trowel by the side of a foundation and a member of the public walks in and trips over my trowel and falls in the trench and its my responsibility? Is it that I write a report and the mounty says it not good enough and the client sues me? Has anybody ever claimed on it?
Posts: 6,009
Threads: 2
Joined: Mar 2017
15th March 2010, 11:29 AM
Posts: 0
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2006
15th March 2010, 01:00 PM
Thanks hosty very good read if I may say so.
I am thinking of the situation of somebody like geli going self employed/ enforced, possibly . When I first started self employed digging everybody said that I would need insurance and I saw that through my cba membership these insurance offers. I had the feeling that most insurances were concerned with public academic excavations rather than commercial archaeology. Some insurance seemed to be for the client finding too much archaeology, but anyway I took up one, after describing what I was doing, and got insurance called public and product insurance and then when I produced an archaeological scheme I put that in because I think that it was something that the curators checked, do you have to have insurance to satisfy a written scheme? But I have always wondered what public and product was for as it seemed to me that I am working on some bodies else’s property and in gelis case somebody else’s scheme.
Probably what I would like to know about is actual cases. Seems to me that would be good information that a members or union should be able to provide. Useful for the risk assessment. Geli did you have to get insurance?
Posts: 6,009
Threads: 2
Joined: Mar 2017
15th March 2010, 02:18 PM
The insurance will be tailored to what you do and where you work. because I work with volunteers quite a bit, I have to have something that covers this as well. But I am very happy (as much as you can be) with my insurance. worth every penny if fan is hit!
You can alos be covered by the 'employers' insurance... if you are this middle term called a 'worker'
So you 'may' not need your own... it all depends.. but check first... as if you cause an accident by leaving a mattock on a path or some-one trips over a bucket on an open day... you don't want to find out that you are not covered... Assume nothing.
Posts: 0
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2006
15th March 2010, 03:12 PM
Quote:
[SIZE=3]So you 'may' not need your own... it all depends.. but check first
Assume nothing
[/SIZE]
too right
That’s what I am trying to do for self employeds like geli. Johnson wrote this:
Quote:
[SIZE=3]Insurance: The down side, you will need employers and public liability insuranc e which will cost, say ?200/annum. If you ar undertaking reporting work you would also be advised to have proffessional indemnity insurance. ?5m is likely to cost ?2-4K depending on how any given insurer assesses your risk.
[/SIZE]
Not sure about the professional indemnity ?2-4k, is that for filling in a context sheet wrong? I cant imaging diggers forking out ?2-4K or why. Looking at published schemes of work for instance some mention professional insurance and others dont:
http://www.planningportal.rugby.gov.uk/fastweb_upload/Planning%20Scanned%20Applications/R09-0504/R09-0504%20Archaeological%20report.pdf
http://www.planningportal.rugby.gov.uk/f...rvices.pdf
has anybody in archaeology ever had to use professional insurance and what was it for?
Posts: 0
Threads: 0
Joined: Nov 2007
15th March 2010, 03:26 PM
Professional Indemnity Insurance is useful for any archaeological contractor working for a major company. Most engineering firms (Balfour Beatty, Laing O'Rourke, etc) will have a vendor/supplier approval system. If you want to supply a service to them in which they need to rely on your interpretation - like archaeology - you need to get approved, and Professional Indemnity is required for this. This is so that, if you give advice that they rely on which is later found to be misleading, then it means that you are insured from the financial repercussions of the mistake, to the value of your insurance. An example could be if an archaeological contractor provides poor advice to their client, and the overall project gets delayed, cancelled or the client gets prosecuted (e.g. "there aren't any Scheduled Monuments nearby, so don't worry about applying for Scheduled Monument Consent for your works")
I'm not aware of any archaeologists that have been sued for providing bad advice to their clients, but I do know that most units that get involved in major infrastructure developments will expect to have professional indemnity insurance.
?He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself?
Chinese Proverb
Posts: 0
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2006
15th March 2010, 05:02 PM
(This post was last modified: 15th March 2010, 10:03 PM by Unitof1.)
Quote:"there aren't any Scheduled Monuments nearby, so don't worry about applying for Scheduled Monument Consent for your works"
would have thought that you would have to be in the scheduled monument area and the developer/landowner would already know that it was scheduled. But I hear what your saying. Seems that if you are going to do predictive work professional indemnity might be necessary rather than reporting on field work. So things like desktop work, but it seems to me a dba is just extra information for the authorizing authorities, does it legally have to be correct?
Sounds like professional insurance more important than ifa membership. So these engineering companies want you to be insured so that they might sue you rather than them taking out insurance for delays due to unforeseen archaeology. I could imagine that the insurance for delaying a large scheme for just one day would be massive, I doubt that any archaeology unit could get insured for that. Surely the archaeologists should write a whole load of contingencies in the contract.
So how would the professional insurance work,
would it be for specific job or per year,
what happens if you do the advice in one year and then get sued in the next.
Have gone through charity pages looking at what the big boys pay for insurance get figures of ? 4,974, through to ?18000 but with no breakdown as to what type. Some of the smaller units seem to pay more but I expect a lot is for public liability like Open days (so you dig the stuff up and then you have to pay for the privilege of showing the site off)
found this site and it includes archaeologist!
https://secure.professionalinsuranceagents.co.uk/index.php
Put in 15000 turnover, I got provisional prices between ?230-?650 to buy a million ? indemnity I suppose you could look at it as about 2% of turnover which I suppose is a legit expense for tax, and easy profit for "Names"
