A 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 the practical problem that liability alone does not: 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. It is taken out by the client 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. It carries short deadlines that are its whole point, the insurer having to rule on cover and then present an offer of indemnity within periods fixed by law, failing which the insured may commence 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 4 January 1978 for any client commissioning construction works, and the French insurance code confines the insurer's decision on cover and its offer of indemnity within deadlines whose breach entitles the insured to an uplift.
dommages-ouvrage, DO, damage to works insurance, préfinancement des travaux