Managing projects electronically could invalidate your insurance. That is the claim of Peter Goodwin, author of a report examining insurance and legal issues in the use of collaborative software.
"People have gone into this area thinking about the practicalities of running a project on these systems, without considering legal issues, and are stretching the limits of their professional indemnity insurance," said Goodwin.

"If you rely totally on a third party to hold the project data and it becomes compromised, if there is a claim, say two years on from the end of the project, your insurance company will say that you should have kept back-up copies, and you may not be able to claim."

"I spoke to one project manager who was implementing an IT system and he hadn't even thought about the legal or insurance implications," he added. "There has been a lot of confusion over these issues in construction and the legal and insurance professions seem unsure of how to deal with electronic collaboration".

Helena Scokolowski, business development manager for Zurich Insurance's building guarantees department, said effective risk management was the key to insurance cover. "We are happy to cover any tool that assists companies in managing their projects, as long as they manage the risk effectively," she said.

"When we consider insuring projects, we look at the building process, rather than the specific tools used to complete that process," she added, but she admitted that the area of electronic project collaboration in construction was something she had yet to deal with.

Scokolowski agreed with Goodwin that keeping back-up copies was essential to running an electronic project effectively. "Good IT management will always involve holding back-up copies in a different place to the originals."

Source

Construction Manager