Every answer and its explanation appears here once you have finished the path. Each one then links to the matching glossary entry, where the concept is set out in full with its worked example.
1. What does the French regime separate by entrusting pre-financing to a damage-to-works policy?
Who pays now from who will pay in the end: it pre-finances without looking for a responsible party, then recovers by subrogation
The works are repaired before the question of fault is put, and that is the whole point of the structure: the owner does not fund a repair while waiting for litigation that lasts years. The search for a responsible party does take place, it simply takes place afterward and between insurers. The other answers name real distinctions in construction law, which decide scope or classification, and not what pre-financing organizes, which is an order in time.
Glossary entry →2. Where does the severity of the ten-year regime come from, for a constructor?
From the presumption: the owner establishes the disorder and its gravity, never a fault
Ten years is long and would be nothing if fault had to be proved: it is the reversal of the burden that makes the regime, and a constructor can be held liable with no failing alleged against it. Retaining the duration rather than the presumption leads to underestimating the exposure of a blameless party. The answer calling it uninsurable is wrong to the point of being the reverse of the subject, since the regime precisely makes that insurance compulsory.
Glossary entry →3. An English-law contract entrusts works located in France to a German constructor. Can the constructor take it for granted that the ten-year regime will not apply?
No: the regime attaches to works located in France, and ousting it through the contract's law is disputed
It is the costliest surprise for a foreign party, and it is discovered at the loss because nothing in the contractual negotiation announces it. In principle, the chosen law governs the parties' obligations; but the ten-year regime protects works built on French soil, and whether it overrides the contract's law as an overriding mandatory provision remains disputed. A constructor that takes its exclusion for granted is therefore betting on an open point, and will find out before a French court. Believing an express clause would suffice to exclude it, as another answer suggests, treats as default a regime that French law declares mandatory (article 1792-5 of the Civil Code). The owner's nationality does not come into it: the works and their location ground the connection.
Glossary entry →4. Who answers under the ten-year regime?
More people than one thinks, down to the manufacturer of an item designed to precise requirements, held jointly liable
The regime stops neither at the contract with the owner nor at presence on site, and that is what makes it a trap: a manufacturer that never set foot on site is jointly liable with the contractor that installed its item (article 1792-4 of the Civil Code) if the item was designed and produced to meet, in service, precise requirements set in advance. It is not thereby deemed a constructor under article 1792-1. The two answers attaching to the contract or to physical presence are the two intuitive tests, and they are exactly the ones the regime does not use. The practical consequence is that who answers must be checked before drawing up a policy's schedule of insureds, not after.
Glossary entry →5. On industrial works, against what is unfitness for purpose assessed?
Against the purpose the contract had defined, which means rereading the contract word by word
On a building, ordinary use is enough to picture the purpose; on industrial works it means nothing, and it is the contract that wrote what the plant was to do. A defect leaving the works standing while preventing them from producing what the contract announced can therefore trigger the warranty, and a word-by-word rereading of the contract becomes an insurance exercise. Relying on standards in force or on the commercial bid moves the reference to documents that do not fix the agreed purpose.
Glossary entry →