Bonds, guarantees, warranties and insurance are the security behind the contract, and they lapse quietly if no one tracks them. These guides cover performance and advance payment bonds, collateral warranties, parent company guarantees and the main insurance options.
The main contract has a bond, a guarantee and warranties. The packages that will actually fail have a signed order and nothing else.
Read nowThe surety pays on presentation and questions afterwards. Courts will restrain a call only in narrow circumstances, which is why contractors resist them.
Read nowThe process is procedural and unforgiving. Most failed calls fail on the notice, the timing or the form rather than on the entitlement.
Read nowThe wording decides everything: the trigger, the cap, the expiry and who proves what. Very few bonds are read before they are filed.
Read nowA collateral warranty gives someone who is not your client, the funder, the buyer, the tenant, a direct contract to sue you on if your work fails. Why they exist, the three clauses that decide how dangerous yours is, and the etiquette of the ones nobody ever signs.
Read nowA performance bond pays the client if you fail to perform the contract, typically after insolvency or serious default, up to its stated cap. What it costs you to give, why the wording decides everything, and when a small firm should push back on the ask.
Read nowBy the time a hidden defect appears, limitation may have run and the contractor may have dissolved. Cover has to be arranged before the work starts.
Read nowIt responds to the claim made this year, not the advice given six years ago. That distinction decides what happens when a policy lapses.
Read nowA fire two days after practical completion and a fire two days before are the same fire with entirely different consequences for who pays.
Read nowA PCG costs nothing to give and is worth exactly as much as the parent behind it. Checking that parent is the whole exercise, and it takes twenty minutes.
Read nowFour policies do the real work: public liability for harm to others, employers liability because the law requires it, contract works cover for the half-built thing itself, and professional indemnity only where you design. What each one answers for.
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