COI tracking for general contractors

The vendors general contractors rely on

A single mid-size project can put a dozen trades on site, each with their own policy, carrier, and renewal date:

• Electricians, plumbers, and HVAC mechanics
• Framers, drywall, and finish carpenters
• Concrete, masonry, and excavation crews
• Roofers and waterproofing subs (often the highest-risk trade)
• Crane, rigging, and equipment-rental vendors

The specific risk

The exposure is doubly sharp for a GC. First, an uninsured sub’s injury or property-damage claim flows up to your policy, spiking your experience mod and premiums for years. Second, your own client’s owner-controlled insurance program (OCIP) and lender almost always require you to prove every tier below you carries coverage. A single expired certificate can hold up a draw request or an audit.

Consider a punch-list day: a drywall sub you brought on in March finished months ago, but their GL quietly renewed at a lower limit — or lapsed entirely — while they were off your radar. If a defect claim surfaces on that work now, the certificate in your folder is stale and the coverage you assumed is gone. That gap between “had a cert once” and “covered today” is exactly where GCs get exposed.

Insurance requirements that matter

Most GCs write these minimums into every subcontract and collect a matching COI before a sub sets foot on site:

Common mistakes to avoid

• Accepting a sub as “certificate holder” only, without the additional insured endorsement that actually extends coverage to you.
• Filing the ACORD 25 without checking that GL still meets your per-occurrence and aggregate minimums.
• Letting a sub back on a punch-list months later without re-verifying their coverage is still in force.

Automate it with CoverGuard

The hard part isn’t knowing the requirements — it’s enforcing them across 30 subs whose policies all renew on different days. CoverGuard reads each ACORD 25 with AI, checks the limits and endorsements against what your contract requires, and chases a renewal automatically before any cert expires.

For the fundamentals, read the complete COI tracking guide or the step-by-step guide to tracking subcontractor COIs. You can also generate recommended requirements with the free COI requirements checklist tool.