We have not gotten it yet but our broker has told us it would be minimum $3,000 a year. The premiums depend on your experience (years practicing with or without claims) and how much work you do. She seemed to think the minimum would be enough for us now... we've got several 75-100,000 projects and a few larger ones, all single family residential remodel/additions.

Oh and I think that premium was for 500,000 per claim and 1,000,000 aggregate. Obviously the limit should be determined by how much work you do and the risks involved.

Thanks. This would be for a startup firm - not any projects yet. Will be doing Single Family Homes exclusively for now....

when we started out we had the small firm package from cna /schinnerer and i think it was 3800 for all 3 years [pre 911]. switched after 911.

what is good about them is they do have a very good education support program available for there insured so great tools for new practices.

anything you presently have started or on the boards wont be covered by anyone. talk to them about prediscesor work, but they may require 1 year wait on that work before they will cover it.

your premium is a function of your revenue -- and that revenu includes any pass thru consultants you have and all reimbursables that you pass through. after post 911, our shot up to 1/2% of our revenue [but thats with no claims]. we also really play by the rules to make sure we kept our premium down -- only aia contracts, only masterspec, qa program in place, insurance contract training for staff.

if with you dabble a bit with cm work related to your design, be careful to declare it on your survey.

I do cna schinnerer too. They give you a nice discount if you get clients to sign a contract with a limit of liability clause in it. For most projects, we do a contract that we wrote with our attorney- I like it better than AIA contract for residential-, and it has a limit of liability clause- the amount of liability is limited to the fee earned. So for example, on a house addition where our fee is $20,000, that is the limit of liability to the client. This not only reduces the insurance cost, but also makes them think twice before yelling lawsuit, plus if they do, there is a limit to how much they will get. Most of our clients sign this agreement, I would guess 90%. Usually only the lawyers object. By the way, I like using our own contract because I add really clear clauses that head off some of the problems one encounters in residential work- we have a clause that says that things will change during construction based on concealed conditions, and that these are to be expected and are not errors; we have a clause that says that we are not responsible for construction costs, and that they may vary considerable from our estimates; we have a clause that addresses verbal communications and approvals, etc. etc.