Professional Indemnity Insurance for Construction:
A Broker’s Placement Guide

Construction professional indemnity insurance isn’t standard PI with a hard hat on. Brokers who treat it like a generalist product tend to get it wrong. 

Standard PI covers a single professional’s advice on a single matter. Construction PI covers exposure that often runs for decades and/or sits across multiple design disciplines on one scheme.  

In design-and-build contracts it blends design liability with construction liability in ways a standard policy was never built to handle. Get the retroactive date, the run-off period, or the aggregation wording wrong, and the gap only shows up years later, when it’s too late to fix. 

If you’re placing construction PI and want direct access to specialist underwriters, get in touch with Exance today.

Who Needs Professional Indemnity Insurance?

Construction PI isn’t one product build for one specific individual. Brokers place it for: 

• Architects: covering design errors and specification advice. PI is required by the Architects Registration Board as a condition of registration. 

• Structural engineers and civil engineers: covering calculation errors and load-bearing design failures, which is the core exposure a professional indemnity engineers broker needs to size correctly before quoting. 

• Project managers: covering programme, cost and contract administration advice. A distinct exposure that PI insurance project managers shouldn’t assume is bundled into a generalist policy. 

• Design-and-build (D&B) contractors: covering design liability taken on alongside construction risk. 

• Specialist consultants: fire engineers, Mechanical and Electrical (M&E) consultants, BREEAM assessors and party wall surveyors whose advice sits inside the same scheme. 

What Does Construction PI Cover?

Construction PI responds to negligent advice, design errors and specification failures, the kind of mistake that doesn’t show up until years after practical completion. It also covers: 

1. IP infringement (using a proprietary design or method without permission) and;
2. legal defence costs, which on a construction claim can rival the damages themselves.

Riva Properties v Foster + Partners shows what’s at stake. The court found the architects liable for £3.6 million after designing a hotel scheme that cost more than double the client’s budget – a stark reminder that design advice, not just design defects, also drives PI claims. 

The Aggregation Issue: Placing PI Across Multiple Professionals 

When more than one construction professional works the same scheme, aggregation clauses decide whether related failures count as one claim or many, and that changes how far the limit stretches.  

The leading authority is AIG Europe Ltd v Woodman, where the Supreme Court held that claims aggregate wherever there’s a genuine interconnection between them, not just a surface-level similarity. 

For brokers, this means checking each professional’s policy wording individually. A tight “same act” clause and a broad “originating cause” clause respond very differently when one design failure triggers claims against the architect, the structural engineer, and the D&B contractor simultaneously.

Why Construction PI Run-off Periods Need to Be Longer

Standard PI run-off is short by comparison. The ARB’s own guidance recommends a minimum of six years’ run-off period once a practice closes. Construction PI needs much more. 

The Building Safety Act 2022 extended the Defective Premises Act’s limitation period to 30 years and 15 years going forward for claims on new dwellings. A defect can surface long after a six-year run-off period has lapsed. 

Get this wrong and even a well-negotiated run-off period is only as strong as the date behind it. This is the kind of detail underwriters check first in a submission. 

What a Good Submission Looks Like

Underwriters move faster on submissions that include: 

• Professional role: architect, engineer, project manager, D&B contractor, or specialist consultant. 

• Project types: residential, commercial, mixed-use, or infrastructure. 

• Fee income: split by project type where possible  

• Retroactive date: confirmed and continuous, with no unexplained gaps. 

• Prior claims: full history, including circumstances notified but not yet claimed. 

A submission missing any of these gets referred, not declined, but referrals cost brokers time they don’t have on a live scheme. 

How to Place Construction Risk Through Exance 

Exance is a specialist MGA for construction insurance in construction-adjacent products and financial lines, giving brokers direct underwriter access rather than a generic referral queue.  

This difference matters most when a scheme also needs Contractors All Risk insurance, a performance bond, or an insurance backed guarantee alongside the PI placement. Since one underwriting team can see the whole risk picture at once – the submission doesn’t need to be passed between separate carriers for each cover. It cuts down on the placement time.  

Ready to place construction PI with a team that underwrites the whole scheme? Get in touch with Exance’s professional indemnity team and place your next submission today.