When Project Profile Drives the Premium.

A Victorian geotechnical consultant with around 15 years of experience came to us for Professional Indemnity cover. The firm had annual revenue of around $1 million - a mid-sized geotech consultancy on paper.

The complexity was in the project profile. At the time of enquiry, the firm was actively working on major tunnelling and rail infrastructure projects in Melbourne - multi-billion dollar developments involving Tier 1 and Tier 2 contractors. The scope was pure consulting during the construction phase: no design, no certification - but the projects themselves were among the largest infrastructure works in the country.

The client held $5 million PI cover with an existing insurer and was looking for competitive alternatives.

We took the risk to specialist underwriters active in the engineering PI market, presenting the full scope including the active mega-infrastructure project involvement. Given the revenue level and occupation profile, we knew this needed manual underwriting through specialist channels rather than platform-based options.

The submission made clear that the work was consulting-only - no design liability, no certification - and provided full details of the active project profile and contractor relationships.

From the specialist market, we obtained a formal quote: over $100,000 for $5 million PI cover.

That figure demands context. On a revenue-to-premium basis, it's roughly 10% - exceptionally high. But the driver isn't the consultant's revenue, experience, or claims history. It's the project profile.

When you're providing geotechnical consulting on multi-billion dollar tunnelling and rail infrastructure, the potential consequential loss from an error is enormous. A geotech miscalculation on a tunnelling project doesn't lead to a $50,000 remediation - it can lead to construction delays, redesigns, and downstream losses measured in the tens of millions. Insurers price to that tail risk, regardless of the consultant's size.