Does Public Liability Pay to Fix a Steel Fixer's Own Faulty Connection?

A steel fixer’s faulty connection and the damage it causes are two different costs. Public liability generally pays for one of them. Redoing the connection itself is treated as the cost of the job, not an insurable loss. Damage the faulty connection causes to something else is a different matter entirely.

Does public liability pay to redo a steel fixer’s own faulty work?

Generally no. Liability policies commonly exclude the cost of performing, completing, correcting or improving work the insured undertook. Redoing a faulty connection falls inside that exclusion. It’s treated as the cost of finishing the job properly rather than a loss someone else suffered because of it.

So what does public liability respond to here?

The damage or injury a faulty connection causes once it’s in place. An incorrectly fixed connection that later fails and damages other completed work or hurts someone on site creates exactly the kind of consequential loss public liability is built to respond to. The connection itself still needs fixing. That part was never what this cover was for.

What’s the practical difference between those two situations?

One is the cost of fixing the steel fixer’s own mistake, which public liability excludes. The other is a loss that lands on someone else because of it, which public liability covers. A connection flagged as defective and reworked before handover is the excluded kind, since nothing has gone wrong yet beyond the connection itself. A connection that fails after handover and brings down part of a ceiling is the covered kind, since the damage has now reached something else. The trigger behind both examples is the same defect. Which side of that line the claim falls on is what actually decides the outcome.

Does this change if a head contractor demands the rework?

Generally not. The exclusion follows the nature of the cost. A head contractor insisting a faulty connection be corrected is still asking for the connection itself to be fixed. That request doesn’t turn the cost of correction into damage caused to someone else’s property, which is the distinction the exclusion rests on.

Is this the same issue as the professional indemnity question for steel fixer certification?

No. These two are worth keeping separate. This exclusion is about the physical cost of redoing faulty work. Certification is a different exposure entirely, carried under professional indemnity when a steel fixer signs off on a connection and that judgement later turns out to be wrong. A single project can raise both questions. Answering one doesn’t answer the other.

Key Takeaways

The information in this article is general in nature and does not constitute legal, financial or insurance advice. Please speak with a qualified adviser about your specific circumstances.