An electrical contractor who installs to someone else’s stamped drawings and an electrical contractor who sizes the panel are doing two different things, and their insurance treats them differently. The second one has taken on an exposure the first does not have.
The useful starting point is a fact that surprises most people: the commercial general liability form, as written, contains no professional services exclusion. Go through the exclusion list in Coverage A and it is not there. What happens in practice is that insurers commonly add one by endorsement when they write a contractor. So the real question is usually not whether your policy excludes design work but which endorsement they attached, and whether it is one of the published forms at all. Many carriers write on proprietary or manuscript forms, and a manuscript professional services exclusion can be broader than any of the three discussed here.
Three endorsements, three different answers
This is the part worth knowing, because the endorsements in common use are not variations on a theme. They draw the line in genuinely different places.
CG 22 43 is the engineers, architects or surveyors professional liability exclusion. It reaches services performed by you, or by any engineer, architect or surveyor employed by you or performing work on your behalf in that capacity. Its real breadth comes from two things: it has no construction means and methods carve-out, and it separately reaches supervisory, inspection, architectural or engineering activities. It is written for a design firm, and on a contractor’s policy it can sweep in work the contractor did not think of as design at all.
CG 22 79 is the contractors professional liability exclusion, and it is the one most often appropriate for a trade contractor. It excludes a defined set of services: preparing, approving, or failing to prepare or approve maps, shop drawings, opinions, reports, surveys, field orders, change orders, or drawings and specifications, together with supervisory or inspection activities performed as part of related architectural or engineering activities.
Then it carves back out: professional services do not include services within the construction means, methods, techniques, sequences and procedures employed by you in connection with your operations in your capacity as a construction contractor.
Two further details decide real claims and are easy to miss. The exclusionary language reaches services performed by you or on your behalf, not only by you. And the endorsement applies only with respect to providing engineering, architectural or surveying services to others in your capacity as an engineer, architect or surveyor, or providing or hiring independent professionals to provide such services in connection with construction work you perform. Whether an electrician sizing a panel is acting in the capacity of an engineer is a genuinely contestable question, and it is the question the endorsement turns on.
Read the carve-out closely. The operative words are employed by you. Services performed on your behalf by someone else may not land inside that protection.
CG 22 80 is the design-build endorsement, and it runs the other direction. It addresses professional services performed on the named insured’s behalf and excludes services performed by the named insured. It also carries a carve-back that matters a great deal to a design-build electrician: the exclusion does not apply to your operations in connection with construction work performed by you or on your behalf. Read that closely, because for a contractor designing in connection with its own construction work, the exclusion may not bite at all.
Put a single set of facts against all three and you can get three different outcomes. That is why the answer to “am I covered for design work” is always another question: which endorsement is on the policy.
Where the line actually falls
Under CG 22 79, the dividing line is not a general principle about workmanship versus professionalism. It is the endorsement’s own definition.
On the covered side sits construction means and methods. How you route the conduit, how you sequence the work, how you terminate the conductors. This is trade work, and it is what the carve-out protects.
On the excluded side sits preparing or approving drawings and specifications, reports, field orders and change orders, plus the supervisory and inspection work attached to architectural or engineering activity. Sizing a panel and issuing a spec sheet resembles that list closely, though whether the exclusion actually reaches it also depends on the capacity question above.
The practical test for an electrical contractor is close to this: are you executing a design somebody else is responsible for, or are you the one deciding what the design should be? The first is trade work. The second is the thing the endorsement is aimed at.
One caution. That is the line under CG 22 79. Under CG 22 43 the line sits somewhere else, and under CG 22 80 it sits somewhere else again. Do not apply this test to a policy whose endorsement you have not read.
What contractors professional liability does differently
If design work is part of the business, general liability is not the instrument for it, and the gap is not subtle.
A general liability policy pays for bodily injury and property damage. That is its grant. A faulty specification that causes no physical damage but costs the owner money in corrective design, acceleration or delay produces exactly the kind of economic loss the general liability form cannot reach, whatever the exclusions say.
Contractors professional liability is built for that. The differences that matter:
It is not standardized, so each insurer defines covered damages differently. Reading the actual form is not optional.
It is commonly written on a claims-made basis rather than occurrence, though because the product is not standardized the trigger should be confirmed on the form rather than assumed. Where it is claims-made, the claim must generally be first made during the policy period, which makes continuity and retroactive dates important in a way they are not with general liability.
Defense costs typically erode the limit rather than sitting outside it.
Deductibles are commonly materially higher, often structured per claim.
It reaches economic damages, which is the entire reason to carry it.
We cover the general shape of this split in general liability versus errors and omissions.
The part that is not about insurance
Taking on design responsibility changes your contract position and may raise a licensing question, and both sit outside the insurance analysis.
On contracts, the AIA A201 delegated design provisions generally require that where a contract calls for design services or certifications, the contractor cause them to be provided by an appropriately licensed design professional whose signature and seal appear on the drawings, calculations, specifications and submittals. The owner and architect specify the performance criteria and may rely on the services provided they did so. Accepting delegated design can also affect the owner’s implied warranty of the adequacy of the plans and specifications. That is a legal question and worth real legal advice.
On licensing in Oregon, ORS 672.020 restricts the practice of engineering and requires a registrant’s seal and signature on final documents including drawings, specifications and plans. ORS 672.060 lists exemptions. Subsection (5) allows a construction contractor licensed under chapter 701 to offer engineering services appurtenant to its construction services where the engineering work is performed by Oregon-registered engineers, and the offer discloses in writing both that the contractor is not an engineer and which engineer or engineers will perform the services. Subsection (6) exempts executing work designed by a professional engineer and supervising construction. Subsections (7) and (8) exempt drawings for small buildings and for single-family dwellings and farm buildings.
There is one narrow Building Codes Division rule directly on point. OAR 918-261-0015 provides that a general supervising electrician, general journeyman electrician or Class A limited energy technician who is employed by a licensed electrical contractor and acting both within the scope of the licensee’s license and as a signing supervisor may design, plan and lay out the electrical portion of a fire protection system without an additional license. The rule limits that authority to the contractor’s own customers, and exempts those design documents from ORS 671.025 and from the stamp of a registered architect or professional engineer. It is a narrow rule with conditions, not a general permission.
We looked for a broader rule exempting routine electrical design work such as panel sizing, load calculations and branch circuit layout from the stamp requirement, and did not find one. That does not mean none exists. It means we are not going to tell you the answer when we do not have it. If your work includes design, confirm your position with the Building Codes Division and the Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying.
What to do with this
If you install to other people’s drawings and nothing else, the endorsement question is worth confirming but is unlikely to be your largest exposure.
If any part of your work involves deciding what the design should be, three things are worth doing. Find out which professional services endorsement is on your general liability policy, because the answer changes the analysis completely. Decide whether contractors professional liability belongs on the program, and if you already carry it, check the trigger and the retroactive date. And confirm the licensing position for the specific design work you are performing.
A coverage review covers the first two. The third is a question for the boards. The trade overview is on our electrician insurance page, and the professional liability coverage itself on contractors errors and omissions.