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 testing period superimpose, and why is it the most dangerous moment?
The site's value at its maximum and the first flow of energy through a plant never tested at load
It is not only that value is at its maximum, nor only that start-up happens: it is that both fall on the same day, so the most likely loss strikes the heaviest exposure. A half-erected plant being started would cost less, and a complete plant never started would break nothing. The other answers describe real facts of this period, contractual or financial, that do not explain why underwriting concentrates there.
Glossary entry · tous-risques-montage-ear2. What gives way at first start-up, and why is that list short?
Alignments made cold, flanges and tie-in points strained during erection, provisional settings, protections inhibited to allow ramp-up
The list is short because it describes not components but provisional states: what gives way is what was assembled under conditions that are not service conditions, and had never been brought to temperature or to load. Inhibited protections deserve a separate mention, since they were deliberately disabled to allow ramp-up, that is, at the precise moment they would have served. Looking for the newest components, as another answer suggests, names what is watched most closely and therefore rarely what breaks.
Glossary entry · tous-risques-montage-ear3. A policy includes twenty-eight days of testing from the first test. A part is missing and the site waits three weeks. What does that wait consume?
The cover exactly as a test would: the duration runs in calendar days from the first test, and the counter appears on no site chart
Confusing calendar days with testing days is what a site naturally does, since it counts everything else in working days: here the clock runs while waiting for a part, an approval or the weather, and nobody is charged with watching it. The consequence is that the window can close before testing has really happened. Believing that notifying the insurer suspends the counter invents an option the clause does not provide, and thinking of it on the twenty-seventh day is already too late.
Glossary entry · delai-carence4. Physical damage occurs seven days after the testing window closed and delays commissioning by four months. What does the policy owe?
Neither: the delay cover is attached to physical damage, and a closed window carries both away
The chain is what to retain rather than either half: with no covered damage there is no damage to indemnify, and since the delay cover requires covered damage, it falls with it. The delay share is often heavier than the damage itself, so the financial consequence of seven calendar days bears no relation to what those seven days appear to be worth. The answer saving the physical damage alone is the most tempting and misses the word attached.
Glossary entry · perte-exploitation-anticipee-alop5. Three limits frame the cover during testing. Which?
A fixed duration, a restriction to new equipment never put into service, and a derogatory deductible or sub-limit regime during the period
The three limits act on different planes and it is their combination that surprises: time, the perimeter of the equipment, and the financial regime applying during the window. The second is the quietest and the sharpest, since equipment put back into service after a modification is no longer new equipment never put into service, which can take out of the testing cover an item believed covered. The other answers cite real requirements found in some wordings, which condition the cover without bounding it.
Glossary entry · tous-risques-montage-ear