Rancho Mesa's Alyssa Burley and Vice President of the Landscape Group, Drew Garcia, discuss how landscape companies can develop a strong subcontract agreement with their tree care partners.

Show Notes: ⁠⁠Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter⁠⁠.

Director/Host: ⁠⁠Alyssa Burley⁠⁠

Guest: ⁠⁠Drew Garcia⁠⁠

Producer/Editor: ⁠⁠Lauren Stumpf⁠⁠

Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “News Room News” by Spence

© Copyright 2023. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Alyssa Burley: Hi. This is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa Media Communications and Client Services Department. Thank you for listening to today's top Rancho Mesa News, brought to you by our Safety and Risk Management Network StudioOne. Welcome back, everyone. My guest is Drew Garcia, Vice President and Landscape group leader with Rancho Mesa. Today, we're going to talk about how landscape companies can develop a strong subcontract agreement with their tree care partners. Drew, thank you for joining me.

Drew Garcia: Alyssa, Thanks for having me.

AB: Now, your group at Rancho Mesa focuses on insuring companies that maintain the greenery that we all enjoy across our cities, whether it's on private property or in the public, right of way. It really doesn't matter. These companies typically specialize in either landscaping or tree care. However, sometimes landscape contracts will include some tree care as part of the deal. So landscape companies will contract with a tree care professional to handle that portion of the job. So if listeners are currently in this situation, what's the first thing that they should consider when bringing a subcontractor to perform tree care services?

DG: I think if they don't have a service partner already set up, a good place to start is asking your peers so your industry friends in the same region would make sense. So asking them who they use or who's been vetted. And then if you don't have that looking probably at the local state associations or national associations to see if they they're a member in standing and then also looking for any tree care company that has some kind of credential. They've completed some certification and also kind of help show some level of professionalism and with standing within the industry.

AB: Right. And you'll want to make sure that you find that reputable company that can support the type of work that that you want to get done. So once you've found the right partner, how should you go about putting together a subcontract?

DG: Yeah so, I think it's important that you work with your attorney because you want to create a either a master subcontract agreement or if it's a job or project specific contract agreement, there needs to be something in writing that clearly identifies indemnity and then also insurance requirements. And working with an attorney is the best way to put together the appropriate subcontract agreement.

AB: Absolutely. And it's better to have everything laid out prior to an incident. And tree care has many dangers from employees being injured, to limbs falling and causing damage to property. So it's really important to know who is responsible for what. So along those same lines, what insurance requirements should landscapers be asking for from their tree care partners?

DG: All right. So you've got your attorney setting up the subcontract agreement. They're working on the indemnity language. Now, work with your insurance professional to kind of figure out what you need to be asking from an insurance standpoint. And the jobs can vary. So it might not be the same thing that you're asking for for each type of work. For example, if you are subcontracting more of a professional opinion or written arborist report from a tree care company, general liability is not going to satisfy your requirements. You're going to need more of a professional policy to step in and help you there.

AB: Okay, yeah.

DG: So we're working with your insurance adviser, insurance professional to make sure you have appropriate limits, and the right coverages in place would be ultra important. And then finding a way to continue to ask for certificates of insurance if this is recurring work with the same subcontractor, you want to find a way or a process to get those certificates of insurance back over to you so that you're able to stay on top of knowing whether or not your subcontractors insured. So creating some kind of a process to do that is also very important.

AB: What about being added as the additional insured?

DG: Yeah, and those are things that you're going to work with your insurance adviser on. They're going to tell you these are the things that we're looking for, from an insurance perspective. And being added as an additional insured would be a part of that.

AB: Yeah. So it sounds like you're saying transferring the risk where possible is critical for landscape contractors and using these initial steps as a landscaper business owner to build out, you know, your subcontract agreement can insulate the company from the growing exposures that exist if they're going to be working with a tree care partner. So, Drew, if listeners have questions about managing their subcontractor risk, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

DG: The easiest is to email me. My email is drewgarcia @ranchomesa.com.

AB: All right. Well, Drew, thank you so much for joining me in Studio One.

DG: Thanks for having me.

AB: This is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa. Thanks for tuning into our latest episode produced by StudioOne. For more information, visit us at ranchomesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.