Guest Essays

Purchasers of a/e professional liability insurance are understandably perplexed by the cyclical nature of this market segment. The cost of coverage goes up and goes down again without any apparent reason. When competition heats up negative pressure is exerted on pricing. In addition to price reductions, coverage tends to expand and previously undesirable classes of business become easier to insure. Purchasers, as well as insurers prefer an environment that supports stability. However that goal seems as elusive today as it has over the past twenty-five years.

When something goes wrong, your first instinct may be to maim, torture or fire the responsible employee. Even in the absence of project challenges, a/e’s tend to move from firm to firm, start their own practices, and generally advance their careers elsewhere. Human health and longevity being what they are also add the possibility that critical witnesses will die before a claim winds its way through the courts.

As a/e design professionals, we share some enormously valuable and needed strengths that enable us to acquire and apply the advanced technical knowledge and skills needed to successfully practice in very complex and challenging technical disciplines. People with natural talents for logical and analytical thinking are drawn to our professions. Powerful skills are developed around these talents that are applied in the workplace to achieve superior performance and propel career advancement.

From a myriad of sources the American public has been taught that virtually every product or service should be guaranteed or warranted; that all users of products and all recipients of services should not suffer physical harm or monetary loss. In a phrase, we have become a “risk free society”. This is reinforced by laws and regulations at every level of government. The Courts reinforce the concept which in recent years does not necessarily seek the determination of strict negligence or fault, but a remedy to reimburse the unfortunate, many times looking more towards resources to pay than wrongdoing.

An engineer was not liable for injuries sustained by an employee of a construction contractor where the engineer’s contract did not make the engineer responsible for site safety and where the engineer did not take any action in the field to supervise or control the contractor’s work or otherwise involve itself in the contractor’s safety practices.