Hydraulic Engineer and Hose Specialist Insurance

The most important thing about hydraulic hose work is a framing point: making up a hose is manufacturing, not fitting.

A hose assembly is created from a hose, two fittings and two crimps, to a specification that includes the system pressure, the fluid, the temperature, the bend radius and the correct fitting standard. Get any of it wrong and it fails under pressure, in somebody else's machine, doing whatever that machine was doing. A hose below the working pressure, a fitting from a different standard that appears to mate, a crimp at the wrong diameter, a hose with the wrong temperature rating, or an assembly routed where it rubs against a moving part are the recognised causes.

So the controls are the ones a manufacturer uses. Crimp specifications followed from the manufacturer's data rather than from experience, dies matched to the hose and fitting, crimp diameters checked and recorded, fitting standards not mixed, and a traceability record of what was made to what specification for whom. That record is also the thing that bounds a problem: if one batch of ferrules or one setting was wrong, a record lets you identify which assemblies are affected rather than every assembly you made that year.

The same assembly carries very different consequences depending on which machine it goes into, and that should shape the limit.

A hose on a workshop press that fails is a mess and a stoppage. The same failure on a crane hoist circuit, an excavator boom, a vehicle braking or steering system, a passenger lift, a press brake with an operator at it, or a machine holding a suspended load is an injury event. Safety critical hydraulic circuits exist across construction, materials handling, agriculture and manufacturing, and a mobile hose service fits assemblies into all of them, frequently at the roadside or in a yard with the machine needed back in service immediately.

So two things follow. The limit of indemnity needs to reflect the applications your assemblies go into rather than your turnover, because a small business supplying lifting and mobile plant carries a large exposure. And it is worth knowing whether safety critical applications are inside or outside the wording, because some products liability policies carve them out or rate them separately, and a business that fits hoses to crane hoist circuits needs to know which side of that line it sits on.

The employers' liability exposure here is specific, well documented, and routinely underestimated by the people at risk.

A hydraulic system holds pressure after shutdown. An accumulator holds it for far longer. A boom or a ram stays up because oil is holding it, so cracking a fitting can drop a load. And a pinhole leak in a pressurised hose produces a jet fine enough to be invisible and powerful enough to penetrate skin, injecting hydraulic fluid into tissue. That injury looks trivial at the time, which is why it is dangerous: it needs immediate surgical attention and is frequently treated as a scratch.

So the controls are isolation and awareness. Pressure released and systems isolated before breaking into them, accumulators discharged rather than assumed discharged, loads lowered or mechanically supported rather than left on hydraulics, never running a hand along a hose to find a leak, and a rule that any suspected injection injury goes to hospital immediately with an explanation of what happened. Expect an underwriter to ask about those specifically, because they distinguish a business that understands its own trade from one that treats hydraulics as plumbing.

Every hydraulic job releases some oil, and on site that creates an exposure that has nothing to do with the machine.

A burst hose on a yard, a cylinder drained on a farm track, a reservoir emptied beside a drain, or a fitting cracked over a gully puts hydraulic oil onto ground or into surface water. Hydraulic fluid is persistent and a small volume contaminates a large area of water, which makes it a reportable pollution incident rather than a cleaning job. On a farm, a quarry, a site with watercourse drainage or a yard with an unbunded drain, that is a regulator's interest and a clean-up cost.

So the kit matters as much as the skill. Drip trays and absorbent carried as standard rather than fetched, a spill kit in every van, a habit of identifying where the nearest drain goes before cracking a fitting, used oil contained and taken away rather than left in a drum on somebody's yard, and biodegradable fluid where a customer's environment justifies it. Then check the pollution position in the policy, including whether gradual pollution from a slow weep is covered as well as a sudden release, because both happen in this trade.

You are a manufacturer, which changes the question. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.