A finished building calls for home or property insurance – but what protects the works while they're being built? That's exactly what the two genres of construction insurance were created for: CAR and EAR. Behind the acronyms lies a simple logic, and the first decision on every project is always the same: which framework does the work belong to?
- CAR (Contractors' All Risks) is the cover for building works: buildings, civil engineering, structural works – protecting the works in progress from design to handover.
- EAR (Erection All Risks) is the cover for erection works: the installation and commissioning of machinery, equipment and technological lines.
- Both follow all-risk logic: whatever isn't excluded is typically covered.
- On a mixed project, the dominant element decides – the point is that the whole job sits under one continuous cover.
CAR: when the works are being built
CAR is the classic framework for construction projects: family homes, blocks of flats, halls, office buildings, roads, utilities. The heart of the policy is the property section, which protects the works under construction – the work carried out, the materials built in, the on-site stock – against sudden, accidental loss: storm, fire, water from pipes, theft, collapse. Alongside it, the liability section deals with damage caused to third parties, from a cracked party wall to a damaged utility line. The structure of these two legs is unpacked in a separate article: the CAR's two sections.
EAR: when the technology comes together
EAR is the erection-side edition of the same logic: production-line installation, boiler-house reconstruction, refrigeration and air-conditioning technology, the assembly of power-plant or industrial equipment. What it adds beyond a "CAR for machinery": erection cover typically also recognises the testing and commissioning period – that delicate stage when the equipment is already running but not yet handed over. Typical EAR situations are shown in the mechanical erection article.
And what if the project is mixed?
Most real-world projects involve both building and erection work: a hall comes with mechanical installations, a solar farm comes with a supporting structure. In such cases, the dominant element decides – a CAR framework extended with erection cover where building work dominates, EAR where technology dominates. In practice, insurers handle this with mixed endorsements; what matters is that the whole job falls under one continuous cover with as few gaps as possible, avoiding a "no-man's-land" between the two genres.
Why does precise classification pay off?
Because the two genres place the emphasis differently: EAR gives more weight to the testing and commissioning period and machinery damage, CAR to natural-catastrophe losses and site risks. The typical consequence of misclassification is a disputable claim. That's why, when requesting a quote, one of the first questions is: what's being built, and how much technological content does it contain? The project data sheet provides a framework for exactly this, while the cover basics come together as a full picture on the Covers page.
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