Damage-to-works insurance
Pre-funding insurance taken out by the client, which pays for repair without waiting for liability to be determined.
Damage-to-works insurance completes decennial liability by solving a practical problem that liability alone does not solve. Even with strict liability, establishing which of a site's participants must pay takes years, during which the defect worsens and the owner waits. This insurance therefore reverses the order of operations. The client takes it out before work begins, it pays for repairing defects of a decennial nature without any prior search for liability, and it is the insurer that afterwards pursues the builders and their insurers. Its short deadlines are its whole point: the insurer must rule on cover, then present an offer of indemnity, within periods fixed by law. If it overruns them, the insured may start the works and recover the cost with a penalty uplift. Like decennial liability it follows the works and benefits successive owners, which makes it a document demanded on any resale within ten years.
Damage-to-works insurance was made compulsory by Law No. 78-12 of January 4, 1978 for any client commissioning construction works. The French insurance code sets deadlines for the insurer to decide on cover and present its offer of indemnity, and missing them entitles the insured to an uplift.
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