How is risk insured on a modular project?
On a conventional project the works sit on one site for the whole build. On a modular project the value moves, and the cover has to move with it.
How is risk insured on a modular project?
Cover follows the module through each phase: works under construction in the factory, transit while it travels, lifting during installation, and the site works throughout. The arrangement differs from a single site-based policy because the value is not in one place for the duration.
Insurance on a construction project usually follows a simple idea: there is a site, works are being built on it, and the works are insured until handover.
A modular project breaks that assumption, because for a significant part of the programme the works are not on the site at all.
Where the value actually sits, by phase
**During fabrication.** Substantial value exists inside a factory, not on the project site. It is construction work in progress, in a third location.
**During transit.** The module is on a road, being driven. That is a different exposure entirely, with a different set of things that can go wrong.
**During installation.** A crane is lifting a large, fully fitted object over a site. The lift is the highest-consequence moment in the programme.
**On site, before and after.** Foundations, external works and services are conventional site risk throughout.
Cover has to follow the module through all of it, without a gap at the point where responsibility passes between phases.
Why the gaps matter more than the limits
The failure mode is not usually an inadequate sum insured. It is a phase where nobody's policy responds because each party assumed the other's covered it.
The transitions are where this happens. Factory to truck. Truck to crane. Crane to foundation.
Establishing who carries the risk at each transition, in writing, before anything moves, is the practical work.
What single accountability changes here
Where design, manufacture, transport and site works sit with one business, the transitions are internal.
There is no handover between a module supplier and a site contractor for a risk to fall into, because there is no handover. The turnkey arrangement covers both halves and closes at a single Occupation Certificate handover.
In a split arrangement, the interface between the module supplier and the builder is where the commercial argument happens if something goes wrong, and it is exactly the interface the insurance conversation is about.
What a client should establish
Who holds the works cover, and whether it responds to work in progress at a factory rather than only at the site.
Whether transit is covered, and by whom.
Whether the lift is covered, and what the exclusions are.
What public liability applies during site works and during installation.
What professional indemnity sits behind the design.
What warranty applies after handover, and what statutory cover the project attracts for its class and value.
None of these are unusual questions. They are the ordinary questions, asked about a delivery model where the works move.
For a financier
A financier funding a project wants to know that value being created off site is protected and identifiable.
That is a documentation question as much as an insurance one. Factory production generates traceability automatically: which module, built when, to which revision, inspected by whom. That record is what makes off-site value assessable rather than notional.
It is one of the items that reduces risk on a modular project rather than adding to it.
The position we take
We set out the cover arrangement for each project rather than describing it generically, because the phases, the routes and the site conditions differ.
What does not differ is that one business carries the project from design to handover, so there is one party accountable at every transition.
Discuss your project and we will set out the arrangement.
MADEmodular / MADEbetter.
MADEmodular / MADEbetter.