Insurance and credentials

One page that says whether a company is clear to work at your sites today.

A certificate of insurance arrives, somebody looks at it, and it goes in a folder. Nine months later it has expired and the folder does not know. That is the whole problem, and it is not a filing problem: it is that the date lives on a piece of paper and nothing reads the paper again.

Lines you can set a figure against

Your figures

General liability (per occurrence)
General liability (aggregate)
Workers' comp / employer's liability
Auto liability
Umbrella / excess
Professional liability
Pollution liability
Crime / employee dishonesty

The rules on the right are where your own figures go, one per line, per trade, each marked required or preferred. Nothing carries a default, because the figure a district asks for and the figure a city asks for are not the same figure and neither is ours to guess.

Here the COI is read by a person, the figure on each line is recorded against the figure you asked for, and the end date is held with it. The file answers a question rather than storing an attachment.

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The lines

The figures are yours. Every one of them.

You set the coverage limits you require, often the number your own insurer or lender asks for. A vendor whose recorded coverage falls below one of them cannot propose on your work until it is raised.

You set each line per trade, and mark it required or preferred. A required line a company falls short on stops the answer before it reaches you. A preferred line is reported and lets the company through, which is how a district asks for something it wants without narrowing the field to nobody. Umbrella cover, pollution and employee dishonesty sit on the same list as general liability, so a requirement your own risk office already writes into a contract has a row to live in.

The documents

What each piece of paper has to show.

Two of these are filed by every company whatever it does. The rest depend on the trade. A reviewer reads each one before the company can answer a request of yours, which is a person doing a job rather than a checkbox somebody ticks on their own behalf.

Business registration is collected and read and gates nothing. It is worth saying plainly rather than letting it sit in a list that looks like a set of checks: holding it does not help a company answer you and lacking it does not stop them.

Two things this file never becomes are worth naming as well. It is not your purchase order system and it is not your contract file. It holds what a company carries, who read it, and the day it runs out.

Every document the rulebook holds

Read by a person

Document	Where it sits	Renewal window
Auto liability	Before a proposal	30 days
General liability	Before a proposal	30 days
W-9	Before payment	No date on it
Workers’ compensation	Before a proposal	30 days
CPO certification	Before a proposal	None
Background check	Before a proposal	None
Lifeguard certification	Before a proposal	None
Pest control license	Before a proposal	None
EPA 608 certification	Before a proposal	No date on it
Electrical contractor license	Before a proposal	None

Not every trade is asked for every row. Which of these a company files depends on the trade it holds, and the chapter beside this object says which is which.

Auto liability

The certificate covering the vehicles the crew arrives in, with the date the policy runs out.

General liability

The certificate, with the coverage limits your own figures are checked against and the date the policy runs out.

W-9

A signed W-9 carrying the company’s legal name and taxpayer number.

Workers’ compensation

The certificate covering the company’s own crew, with the date the policy runs out.

CPO certification

The card carries the date it expires.

Background check

The completed check, with the date it was run and the date it runs out.

Lifeguard certification

The certification carries the date it expires.

Pest control license

The state license to treat a building for termites, rodents and wood-destroying organisms, with the date it expires.

EPA 608 certification

The federal certification required to handle refrigerants under EPA Section 608. It carries no expiration date.

Electrical contractor license

The state license to perform electrical work as a company, with the date it expires.

Additional insured, said plainly

What the file holds is the certificate, the figure on each line, and the date the policy runs to.

Naming your agency as an additional insured is your carrier and their carrier extending a policy to cover you for what their work causes. It is agreed in your contract and evidenced by an endorsement form their agent issues. That form is not something this reads, checks or holds, and no sentence here will tell you it does. What is held, read and dated is the certificate. Everything past that stays where it already sits, between you, the company and its agent.

The credentials

On top of the insurance, whatever the trade requires.

Beyond the two documents everybody files, each trade is asked for the credential its own work requires. The list below is the rulebook read out, which means the trade with nothing to show says so rather than being quietly left off.

Pool cleaning
CPO certification
Grounds and athletic fields
Auto liability
Custodial and porter work
Background check
Aquatics and site attendants
Background check
Pest control
Pest control license
HVAC
EPA 608 certification
Electrical
Electrical contractor license
Painting
The two insurance lines, and nothing further

Three of those rows are worth reading twice. Painting has no third document because no state issues a painting license, so there is nothing to ask for and this does not invent one. The federal refrigerant certification a mechanical company holds carries no expiration date at all, so it is read once and kept. An electrical license gets no renewal window, on the same reasoning a district would apply itself: an expired license is not a license.

The day it lapses

The November expiry that nobody finds until March, found in November.

The end date comes off the certificate and is held with it, so a policy that runs out fails on the day it runs out. An insurance line gets a 30-day window to come back, because a renewal in progress is a renewal. A credential gets none, because a certification either is current on the day or is not.

What that changes for a facilities director is when the discovery happens. Not standing at a gate in July with a summer crew waiting, and not in an audit letter. In November, on the page, while there is still time to ask for the renewal.

The rule, in full

VendoRFP verifies every vendor’s insurance and trade credentials, then tracks the expiration dates. An insurance policy that lapses has 30 days to be renewed; after that the vendor can’t propose on your work, and you can’t send them out or put them on the schedule until it is back in force. A certification gets no window at all: it has to be current the day a company proposes. A job already under way is what this never stops: a crew standing on your grounds finishes it and files the record.

Read the last clause. A lapse pauses new answers and new work; it does not throw a crew off your site mid-job.

What a line answers

A line does not pass or fail. It says which of these it is.

Each coverage line on each company resolves to one of the answers below, and the distinction between two of them is the one worth knowing before you rely on any of this.

Meets

A person read the certificate, the figure on the line clears the figure you set, and the policy has not run out. This is the only answer that lets a company through a line you made required.

Short

The company carries this line and carries less of it than you asked for. The gap is reported in dollars, to you and to them, so the conversation is about a number rather than about whether they qualify.

Missing

You asked for the line and the company has stated nothing on it. Not a low figure: no figure.

Expired

The policy ran out. A date that has passed is failed on its own terms rather than counted as cover, which is the whole reason the end date is held with the document.

Unverified

The company has stated a figure and nobody here has read a certificate showing it. It is reported to you as the company’s own claim, in those words, and it never produces a meets. That is the sentence worth testing us on.

Advisory gap

A line you marked preferred rather than required is short or missing. It is reported to you and it does not stop the company answering, because you said it was preferred.

A stated figure nobody has read is never counted as cover. That is the difference between this and a spreadsheet of what companies told you, and it is the whole reason a person reads the certificate. How a certificate is verified

Insurance and credentials

Set your figures once and stop reading certificates in a folder.

Open an account, enter the lines your own requirement already names, and the paperwork of every company answering your requests is read against them from that day. VendoRFP keeps the dates.

Start free How verification works

The file is the part of this a purchasing office will test first, so it is written to be tested: every mechanism above is stated the way it runs, and the ones that do not exist are named as not existing.

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Industries we serve

Custodial and groundsSummer workHow a request works