Drywall contractor insurance, for the dust and the wall that has to pass

Silica. OSHA's construction silica standard "applies to all occupational exposures to respirable crystalline silica in construction work, except where employee exposure will remain below 25 micrograms per cubic meter of air (25 µg/m³) as an 8-hour time-weighted average (TWA) under any foreseeable conditions." The permissible exposure limit is 50 µg/m³ over eight hours, and an employer with covered tasks must "establish and implement a written exposure control plan" naming each task, its controls, and its respirator (29 CFR 1926.1153). The standard's Table 1 lists saws, drills, grinders, and jackhammers with the control that goes with each; it does not list drywall sanding by name. What it asks of a drywall employer is the scope sentence: whether sanding this compound, or cutting cement board for the wet rooms, puts a worker at or above 25 under any foreseeable conditions. The answer depends on the product and on whether the sander is on a vacuum, and that is the question an underwriter is asking when they ask about dust control. The tile contractor insurance page carries the full standard, Table 1 and all, because for a tile crew every cut is in it.

Lead, on the demolition side. A remodel that starts by tearing out painted board or old plaster in a home built before 1978 is inside EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, which applies to "anyone paid to perform work that disturbs painted surfaces in homes, childcare facilities and preschools built before 1978" and requires the firm to be "EPA- or state-certified" and the work done by certified renovators using lead-safe practices (EPA, Renovation, Repair and Painting Program). The rule's minor-work floor, 6 square feet of painted surface per room inside or 20 outside, excludes "demolition of painted surface areas" outright, so a demolition is a renovation at any size (40 CFR 745.83). OSHA's construction lead standard runs alongside it for the crew: it covers "all construction work where an employee may be occupationally exposed to lead," including demolition of structures where lead is present, sets an action level of 30 micrograms per cubic meter and a PEL of 50, and begins by requiring each covered employer to "initially determine if any employee may be exposed to lead at or above the action level" (29 CFR 1926.62). The painting contractor insurance page is where both lead rules are written out, because a painter meets them on every pre-1978 job and a drywall crew meets them on the ones with demolition.

The license is a state question. California licenses the trade as its own classification: a C-9 drywall contractor "lays out and installs gypsum wall board and gypsum wall board assemblies including nonstructural metal framing members, and performs the taping and texturing operations including the application of compounds that adhere to wall board to produce a continuous smooth or textured surface" (CSLB, Licensing Classifications), with the license required on any project whose total price, labor and materials, reaches $1,000, since January 1, 2025 (CSLB, AB 2622 implementation bulletin). Painting, flooring, and tile hold C-33, C-15, and C-54 in the same list. Texas licenses none of them: the Department of Licensing and Regulation's program list, read in full, has no drywall or plastering entry, and the state licenses named trades rather than construction work generally (TDLR, licensed programs); the trades it does license are on the Texas contractor insurance hub. New Jersey does not license the trade but requires home improvement contractors working on residential property to register, and registration requires proof of commercial general liability insurance of at least $500,000 per occurrence (NJ Division of Consumer Affairs, HIC registration). Where your state falls between those answers is on the handyman insurance page, whose map covers the finish trades because most states regulate them the same way.

Under a general liability policy, completed operations "refers to work of the insured that has been completed as called for in a contract ... or work that has been put to its intended use," in IRMI's definition (IRMI, completed operations), and claims arising from completed work draw on their own aggregate limit, separate from the general aggregate (IRMI, products-completed operations). For a drywall contractor the completed-operations claim is a wall that was supposed to be something. New York's rating bureau, describing the trade for classification, notes that "fire-resistant wallboard may be required in some structures" and water-resistant board is common in bathrooms (NYCIRB, class 5445). A rated assembly in a garage wall, a corridor, or a party wall between units is inspected against what was specified, and a wall that fails that inspection after the certificate of occupancy, or that fails in the fire it was rated for, is the claim this trade is priced on. Damage to the wall itself and damage the wall's failure causes to the building and the people in it are treated differently by the form; ask an agent how the policy you are offered handles each, in those words, before the first commercial job. On new construction the building itself is insured, if at all, under the project's builders risk policy, which leaves defective work out, and whether your company is named on it is worth reading before the first stack of board is delivered. The certificate a general contractor requires before your crew starts is on the bonded and insured guide.

Business property coverage can extend to equipment and supplies, owned or leased (NAIC). A drywall company's property is panel lifts, scissor lifts owned or rented, screw guns, routers, automatic taping tools, sanders and their vacuums, and the board itself, which is stacked on a subfloor in an unlocked building from delivery to hanging. Agents write this as an equipment floater; ask how a rented lift is covered, and whether a stack of board ruined by a roof leak the week before you hung it is yours, the general contractor's, or the builders risk policy's.

Compound, texture, and primer make you an employer under OSHA. Joint compounds, setting-type compounds, spray textures, and the primers a finishing crew applies are chemical products with safety data sheets, and OSHA's hazard communication standard requires "all employers to provide information to their employees about the hazardous chemicals to which they are exposed," through labels, safety data sheets, and training (29 CFR 1910.1200; OSHA, Hazard Communication). The general PPE standard has the employer assess the hazards, select the equipment, and see that it fits (29 CFR 1910.132); for a finishing crew that assessment is the dust mask question the silica standard already asked.

A business that owns or leases vehicles needs commercial auto; personal policies may exclude business-related liability, and commercial forms can reach rented and non-owned vehicles, including an employee's own truck driven for the company (NAIC). A drywall company that delivers its own board runs a flatbed with a boom, and that truck is rated on the boom, the weight, and where it goes as much as on the driver. The hanger who meets the crew at the job in their own pickup is driving for you; hired and non-owned auto liability is the line that answers for that truck, and a one-truck company still has the exposure.

Nearly all states require an employer to carry workers compensation, in the NAIC's words (NAIC). The premium is built from payroll sorted into classifications, a rate per $100 of payroll for each, and an experience modifier for the employer's own loss history, in the Texas Department of Insurance's description (TDI, workers compensation rate guide). Drywall is its own class, and in New York it is one class for the whole crew: code 5445, "Wallboard Installation – Within Buildings – All Operations to Completion & Drivers," covers employers installing sheetrock, wallboard, drywall, and plasterboard in residential or commercial buildings, and the bureau's description says the classification includes taping contractors and drywall partition installation (NYCIRB, class 5445). That is New York's code; your state's bureau has its own, and sets its own rate. For an owner the description settles a common question: the finishing crew's payroll is not a lighter class than the hanging crew's in that system, and the underwriting questions are about stilts, lifts, and the weight of the sheet.

The taping sub. Many hangers pay a separate crew to tape and finish, and whether that crew is your employees turns on the right to control the work, not on the invoice. For the IRS an employee "works at the control and direction of another," and the right to control counts whether or not it is exercised (IRS Publication 4902). A taper who works your schedule, on your jobs, with your compound, is a classification question worth settling with an agent before an audit settles it. Texas lets a private employer decline coverage, where the Department of Insurance says workers compensation "is not required in most cases" (TDI, employer resources); what a non-subscriber files and gives up is on the Texas hub.

What moves the number, rather than the number. New construction versus remodel leads, because demolition brings the lead and dust rules with it and remodel work happens inside an occupied, finished house. Commercial versus residential, and the height of the work, since a crew on stilts in a two-story house and a crew on scissor lifts under a warehouse deck are different books. The share of rated assemblies in your work. Revenue, because liability premium is often rated on it, and payroll, because workers compensation premium is built on it. The subcontractors you use and whether they carry their own coverage, since a taping crew without it is priced as your payroll. The trucks on the schedule, and whether one of them carries a boom. Loss history, which reaches the workers compensation premium through the experience modifier and the liability premium through the file. Your state. An application that says only "drywall" invites an underwriter to picture the tallest lift and the oldest house the class contains. Give them the project mix, the dust control, and whether you do demolition, and they price the company in front of them.