Water Treatment and Water Hygiene Contractor Insurance

A legionella risk assessment is not a report filed and forgotten. It is the document a duty holder produces when asked to show they managed the risk.

That makes its quality the whole of your liability. If an outbreak occurs, investigators will read your assessment and ask whether the system that caused it was identified, whether the control measures you specified were adequate, whether the monitoring regime you set would have detected the problem, and whether your recommendations were followed. A thin assessment that lists the obvious systems and sets a generic regime is indefensible, because it shows no evidence of examining the building that actually exists.

So the discipline is scope and specificity. Record what systems were assessed and, crucially, what was not assessed and why, because buildings have dead legs, little used outlets, showers in plant rooms and systems nobody mentioned. Specify control measures against the system in front of you rather than a template. And set a monitoring regime you or the client will actually perform, because a regime on paper that nobody follows is worse than a realistic one.

The commonest shape of a claim in this trade is an assessor who found the problem, said so, and was overruled.

Remedial work on water systems is expensive and disruptive: replacing dead legs, removing redundant pipework, replacing a tank, fixing temperatures that need a new cylinder. Clients defer it, sometimes for years, while continuing to pay for monitoring. When an outbreak follows, the assessor is in the chain of responsibility and the client's recollection of what they were told is rarely the same as yours.

Which makes a specific habit the most valuable one in the business: every recommendation in writing with a risk rating and a timescale, the client's decision recorded, and outstanding items restated at every subsequent visit rather than carried silently. A log showing the same high risk item outstanding across eight visits with the client informed each time is a complete defence. The same item unmentioned since the original report two years ago is not, even though you found it first.

The physical half of this trade puts aggressive substances into systems serving occupied buildings, which is a different risk from the paperwork.

Chlorination at disinfection strength, descaling acids, biocides and closed system inhibitors all have to go in at the right concentration into the right system, and the building has to be managed while they are there. The failures are over-concentration attacking pipework and seals, dosing the wrong system, a disinfection where outlets were not isolated and somebody drank from one, and a discharge to drain that should have been neutralised first.

The controls are ordinary and the records are the defence: concentrations measured rather than estimated, outlets isolated and signed before disinfection, the building informed in writing with the responsible person named, and discharge consents respected. Check the policy on gradual pollution as well, because a dosing system quietly leaking to drain over months is the gradual kind that many wordings exclude while covering sudden release.

Employers' liability in this trade is mostly about two places: inside a tank and on a roof.

Cleaning or inspecting a cold water storage tank means entering a confined space, frequently through a small hatch, with limited ventilation and chemical residue present. Cooling towers and roof mounted plant mean access at height, often by fixed ladder, on structures that were installed decades ago. Both are places where somebody who gets into difficulty cannot simply walk out.

Insurers will ask about this directly, so have the answers ready: your confined space permit procedure, atmospheric testing, whether a top man is always posted, your rescue arrangement rather than a plan to call for help, and how roof plant access is assessed before an engineer climbs. Some policies restrict or exclude confined space entry, which on a business doing tank cleaning removes a core activity, so establish the position before relying on it.

Two clauses decide this placement: legionella illness and confined space. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.