Compliance and Documentation
COI and Certificate Tracking for roofing contractors
Nothing at your end has to go wrong. Somebody else stops paying for something, and the consequence arrives at your gate.
One current document per party
A certificate collected from every party who needs to produce one, at the point of engagement — which is the only moment when asking is easy, because it is the only moment they want something from you.
The expiry read off the document itself and tracked separately from it. A folder full of certificates tells you what was true when they were filed; a list of end dates tells you what is true now.
And the chase started ahead of the date rather than after a refusal at a gate. The difference between those two is a phone call versus a crew standing outside a site they cannot enter.
An expiry is not something that happens to you
Most operational risks announce themselves in some form. A delivery fails to arrive. A crew rings in. Even a missed permit produces a refusal somebody hears about. A certificate does none of this. On the day it expires nothing is sent, nothing changes on the document, and the folder looks exactly as organised as it did the week before.
The lapse is also usually nobody’s decision. A small subcontractor does not choose to let something go; a payment does not come out, or a policy is not renewed during a slow month, or a business quietly changes shape. From your side that is indistinguishable from every other week — and it stays indistinguishable until the moment somebody asks, which is typically a general contractor before a site induction or a customer part way through diligence.
What makes this different from the rest of the department is that the remedy is not available at the moment of discovery. If your own credential has lapsed you can act; if a subcontractor’s has, you can only ask them, and they may be slow, unreachable or no longer trading. Your options at that point are a function of how early you noticed, and noticing is the only lever you have.
So the work is front-loaded into two habits: obtain the document while you still have leverage, and watch the date rather than the folder. Neither is difficult. Both stop happening the moment nobody owns them.
What the document is evidence of
A certificate is worth tracking because of what sits behind it, and what sits behind it is generally an obligation on the other party rather than a courtesy to you. Taking one state’s treatment as a worked example of the class — and it is one state’s, since this is built jurisdiction by jurisdiction — California Labor Code section 3700 provides that “Every employer except the state shall secure the payment of compensation in one or more of the following ways”, going on to enumerate them, the first being to be insured by an insurer authorised to write that cover in the state.
Two things follow that are useful to a contractor and are not about insurance. The first is that the duty belongs to the subcontractor as an employer — it is theirs, continuous, and not something your paperwork creates or discharges. A certificate is also evidence about a moment: it reports that an arrangement existed when the document was issued, which is precisely why the date on it carries all the weight.
What this page does not do, deliberately, is go any further. Whether a given certificate shows the right cover for a given exposure, what limits or forms are appropriate, and what any of it means for a particular arrangement are questions for you and your own licensed adviser. This brand holds no insurance licence, places nothing, recommends nothing and evaluates nothing. It establishes that a current document exists, from the party you expected, with a date somebody is watching.
This describes one state’s statute to illustrate what a certificate evidences. It is not legal advice and not insurance advice, it makes no determination about any subcontractor, arrangement or coverage of yours, and the position differs materially by jurisdiction. Those questions belong with your own counsel and your own licensed adviser.
The only documents here that are not yours
This desk sits inside Compliance and Documentation, and the boundary that governs the department — including where tracking a document stops and assessing it would begin — is set out there rather than repeated here. What is particular to this page is ownership: the rest of the department watches credentials the company holds, and this function watches documents belonging to everybody else.
What owners ask about their subcontractors
Why is collecting these so difficult?
Because of when it is asked. A subcontractor who wants to start on Monday will produce anything you ask for; the same subcontractor two months later, already paid, has no particular reason to reply. Nothing about the request changes — only the leverage, and the leverage is entirely a matter of timing. Almost every difficulty on this desk is a request that was made late.
What do you actually do with them?
Collect one per party at engagement, read the expiry date off the document rather than assuming a year, and start chasing renewal before that date rather than after somebody is refused entry to a site. It is unglamorous and it is almost entirely about the calendar rather than the paperwork.
Do you check whether the coverage is any good?
No, and this is the clearest limit on the page. Whether a certificate shows the right kind or amount of cover for a given exposure is a question for you and your own licensed adviser — this brand holds no insurance licence and evaluates nothing. What this desk establishes is that a current document exists, from the party you expected, with a date you can see.
A certificate expired mid-job. How did nobody notice?
Because expiry is not an event that happens to you. Nothing arrives. The document sits in a folder looking exactly as it did the day it was collected, and the only thing that changed is a date printed on it that nobody is reading. That is the whole argument for tracking the date separately from storing the document.
Our subs are small outfits. Is this worth the friction?
The friction is real and it is mostly one-off. Making the request a condition of engagement rather than a favour asked later converts it from an ongoing negotiation into a step in a process, and small outfits are generally used to that from the larger contractors they work for. What causes lasting friction is asking inconsistently.
What happens when somebody simply will not produce one?
You find out early, which is the point, and while it is still a decision rather than a discovery. What you do about it — proceed, wait, engage somebody else — is a commercial and legal judgement that stays with you. This desk makes sure the judgement is available at the moment it is cheap to exercise.
The employer-duty statute cited here
- California Labor Code section 3700 — Employer duty to secure payment of compensation — California Legislative Counsel
Find the expiry date on your last three
If that means opening three documents rather than reading one list, the dates are being stored and not watched.