Falls from height. Struck-by incidents. Fire. These are the hazards construction firms are conditioned to focus on, but according to Becky Jones (pictured), existing business team leader at Touchstone Underwriting, they're no longer where the industry's biggest vulnerabilities are emerging.
"I would say that cyber exposures and deep supply chain issues can be overlooked," she said.
Construction sites have become far more digitised, with building information modelling (BIM) platforms, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and connected equipment now commonplace. A cyber incident can do far more than disrupt IT systems.
"A cyber event can halt operations, and it can expose project data far beyond a traditional theft."
Jones, author of Smart Safety: AI, Smartwear and the Impact on Construction Insurance, said the answer is not to resist technological change but to recognise that digital risks now deserve the same attention as traditional physical hazards. She believes the same is true of supply chain risk, which has evolved well beyond simple delays.
"Supply chain risks have evolved from simple delays into systemic vulnerabilities around material volatility and single-source dependencies," she said.
Labour shortages and an ageing workforce are compounding those pressures, widening skill gaps just as new technology is being adopted faster than many firms can train people to use it safely.
For Jones, good risk management is no longer about producing paperwork for its own sake.
"It has to be more than a tick-box exercise," she said.
Generic, one-size-fits-all risk assessments are increasingly inadequate. Site-specific and activity-specific planning is essential because hazards vary considerably even between similar projects, whether that involves apprentices requiring additional supervision or subcontractors whose health and safety standards need verifying rather than assumed. That same principle increasingly shapes underwriting, as changing working practices introduce new risks alongside new ways of building.
Remote and hybrid site oversight, together with automation, reduce some traditional risks while introducing others, including technology failures and data breaches. Modular construction and off-site fabrication reduce falls and struck-by incidents but create new quality control, logistics and integration challenges. Increasing reliance on subcontractors also fragments responsibility across projects, making it more important than ever to understand where insurance sits and whether cover remains adequate throughout the supply chain.
The cumulative effect is changing what underwriters are assessing, with the focus shifting from traditional measures of frequency and severity to the resilience of the wider project ecosystem.
"The focus has to shift towards resilience - how the entire project ecosystem handles shocks - rather than just traditional frequency and severity," Jones said.
Rather than simply estimating how often something might go wrong, insurers are increasingly asking whether a project can withstand disruption and continue operating when something inevitably does.
Jones has watched that evolution throughout her career. What was once largely a matter of assessing property damage and casualty exposures has become far broader as digital transformation, climate change and increasingly complex global supply chains have turned construction risk into what she described as a strategic business issue rather than simply an operational one.
That changing risk landscape also demands a different relationship between brokers and underwriters.
Jones said the strongest submissions do more than describe a project. They demonstrate how risks are identified, managed and monitored throughout the build, supported by site-specific risk assessment method statements for higher-risk activities and evidence of ongoing training rather than relying solely on initial inductions.
She also encouraged brokers to engage with underwriters earlier in the placement process instead of treating them simply as a destination for completed submissions.
As construction projects become more digitally connected and operationally complex, understanding how a business responds to disruption is becoming just as important as understanding the hazards it faces.
