Underground Utility & Care, Custody & Control

It depends entirely on how your program is built. Standard general liability often applies care-custody-control and below-grade exclusions that limit or remove coverage for damage to the utility you strike, while it may pick up some resulting third-party damage. To actually cover a utility strike, you need specific underground-utility and CCC coverage that closes those gaps. We make sure that coverage is in place, because a strike is the exposure a bore contractor faces every day.

Care, custody, and control refers to property in your control while you work on or around it — for a bore contractor, the utility you're installing and the existing lines in your bore path. Standard liability excludes CCC, treating that property as your responsibility to handle. But on underground work, damage to lines in your control is exactly the loss you need covered, so we arrange below-grade and CCC coverage to insure it rather than leaving it carved out by exclusion.

811 — the national 'Call Before You Dig' system — is the foundation of damage prevention: you notify the one-call center, utilities mark their lines, and you pothole to confirm before boring. Carriers expect contractors to follow this process, and a strike where you followed 811 is handled very differently from one where you skipped it. Failure to call 811 is the top cause of buried-utility damage nationwide. A disciplined locate process protects your crews and supports your coverage and pricing.

They scale fast and go well beyond the line itself. A fiber strike can interrupt service to thousands of customers and trigger liquidated-damages and revenue-loss claims from the carrier. A gas strike is a safety emergency with evacuation and emergency response. A water or sewer strike means emergency repair and often property damage to adjacent structures. These downstream and consequential losses are frequently where the largest dollars are, which is why we size coverage to the utilities you bore near.

We structure your program so the strike and its downstream consequences — including service interruption — are addressed together, because cutting a utility's service to its customers is often where the real exposure lies. The exact terms depend on the coverage placed, so we build it deliberately rather than assuming a standard GL will respond. Tell us the kind of utilities you bore around and we'll size the coverage to that exposure.

Yes — good damage prevention reduces the frequency of strikes but doesn't eliminate them, because lines get mismarked, abandoned utilities aren't always in the records, and ground conditions surprise even careful crews. A diligent 811 and potholing process is essential and helps your insurability, but it's the underground-utility and CCC coverage that pays when a strike happens anyway. The two work together: discipline reduces claims, insurance covers the ones that still occur.

The exposure exists for everyone who bores, but the limits scale with the work. A contractor running short bores near low-consequence utilities needs less than one crossing major fiber backbones or high-pressure gas in dense areas. We size your underground-utility coverage and limits to the kind of utilities you actually work around and the consequences of a strike on them, whether you're an owner-operator or a multi-crew utility contractor.

Call 844-967-5247 or request a free quote and tell us what you bore and the kind of existing utilities you work around. We'll close the below-grade and care-custody-control gaps in your program, coordinate it with your general and pollution liability, and size limits to your real strike exposure. Quotes are free and carry no obligation.