As a self-employed boilermaker, your work involves cutting, shaping, and welding steel to assemble and construct metal products for boilers, tanks and other structures. By the nature of your work and the different job sites you work on, there is a potential risk of an accident occurring.

If an accident results in damage to property or injury to third parties and you are found liable, you could face significant costs for compensation. This has the potential to cripple your business and, in the worst case, even lead to personal bankruptcy. This is why it is essential to have public liability insurance to protect yourself financially in these situations.

Even when you take all care (and even if you believe you are not at fault) you could still be subject to legal action that finds an accident, either directly or indirectly, was caused by your negligence while performing your work.

Given the hazardous nature of your work, there are many things that could go wrong. A visitor to a site could trip on your equipment and injure themselves or a small fire could spread before you have time to extinguish it and destroy someone else’s property. In an industrial setting, an accident or mistake could lead to significant damage to a client’s infrastructure. Regardless of your skills or how careful you are, accidents can happen, and when they do public liability insurance gives you peace of mind of knowing that you may be covered financially for claims made against you.

Public liability insurance may cover the costs of legal representation when defending yourself in court, as well as the cost of compensation for property damage, or injury to a third party, if you are found liable. This could include the cost of repairing or replacing damaged property, paying any medical and rehabilitation expenses associated with an injury, compensation for lost earnings of an injured party, compensation for wrongful death or any other compensation that is ordered by a court. In the most serious of cases, this could cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

While you may not always be legally required to hold public liability insurance when working as a boilermaker in Australia, it makes sense to buy enough insurance to protect yourself against many potential risks of causing damage or injury to others while doing your work. It gives you the peace of mind of knowing that when an accident occurs, you may be able to engage proper legal representation to defend yourself against a legal liability claim and, if you are found liable, to know you may be financially protected from the costs of compensating the injured party.