Thermal Insulation and Industrial Lagging Insurance

This is the trade with the highest routine chance of meeting asbestos, and almost no policy will pay if you disturb it.

Pipe lagging, sectional insulation, rope, gaskets, board and sprayed coatings on anything installed before 2000 may contain asbestos, and insulation products are among the most hazardous because they release fibres easily. A lagger who strips an old run to replace it, cuts into a cladding to get access, or breaks a section to reach a valve can contaminate a plant room, a riser and the air path of a building in minutes. Asbestos liability is excluded on most wordings, so the consequence is not an insurance question, it is the business.

So the operating rule is simple and absolute: no pre-2000 material comes off until its asbestos status is known. Insist on the building's asbestos register and the refurbishment and demolition survey before starting, refuse to proceed where neither exists, brief every operative that unidentified old lagging is a stop rather than a judgement call, and have a written procedure for what happens when something unexpected is found. A main contractor pressing you to crack on without a survey is asking you to take a risk no policy carries.

Most of this trade happens in buildings and plants that cannot be switched off, and that turns small damage into large losses.

Lagging and cladding means working around live pipework, valves, actuators, sensors, trace heating and instrumentation, frequently in a tight plant room with limited access. The realistic incidents are a sensor knocked out of calibration or broken, a small bore pipe or a capillary crushed, an actuator damaged by a cladding screw, trace heating cut while fixing, and a valve left inaccessible. In a hospital, a data centre, a food plant or a process line, the consequence is not the repair but what stops.

Which makes the sequence and the records matter. Walk the area with the client's engineer before starting and record what is there, agree access and what must remain accessible after cladding, use fixings that cannot reach what is behind, and raise anything already damaged before you work round it. Where a shutdown is needed, say so rather than working live to keep a programme. And check how your policy treats consequential loss in a process environment, because that is where the figures are.

The quiet failure in this trade is insulation that was installed properly and does not do its job, and the damage lands on the building.

Cold services below the dew point will condense if the insulation is too thin, if the vapour barrier is not continuous, or if a fitting was left bare. The water then drips onto ceilings, electrical equipment, stock or a process below, which is damage caused by a system built as it was specified. Hot services under-insulated waste energy and create a burn risk on accessible surfaces. Both are performance failures rather than defects, and they surface weeks or months later when somebody notices a stain.

So the specification question needs answering before the first metre goes on. If a consultant specified thicknesses and vapour barriers and you installed to it, your exposure is workmanship and the record of what you installed is your defence. If you sized it, the performance is yours and needs insuring as advice. Either way, continuity of the vapour barrier at fittings, valves and supports is where the condensation actually starts, and that is a workmanship detail worth photographing before it is clad over.

Employers' liability in this trade is driven by the places the work happens rather than by the materials.

A lagger spends the day in plant rooms, vertical risers, ceiling voids, crawl spaces and sometimes inside ducts or vessels, which is confined space work with the usual hazards plus live steam and hot surfaces a few inches from their hands. Add fibres from mineral wool, cuts from metal cladding, and work at height in an open plant room, and the exposures are constant rather than occasional.

Expect an insurer to ask about it in those terms: confined space permits and atmospheric testing, whether operatives ever work alone in a riser or a void, how hot surfaces are isolated or protected before work, the rescue arrangement where somebody cannot simply walk out, and respiratory protection with face fit testing for fibre work. Some policies restrict confined space entry, which on a business working risers and vessels removes a core activity, so establish that position rather than assuming it.

Asbestos and consequential loss decide this one. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.