Missouri Flooring Contractor Insurance

Missouri’s workers’ compensation law writes a separate coverage test for construction-industry employers who erect, demolish, alter or repair improvements, so a flooring business should measure itself against that construction wording, quoted below as the state prints it, and not against the general rule. Missouri also issues no state contractor license, which puts licensing with the city or county where the job sits, while lead-safe renovation certification comes from EPA and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources runs an asbestos program that reaches flooring removal.

Put together, those findings mean a Missouri flooring owner answers to a short list of offices, but not the list most people expect. Missouri keeps no board that issues a flooring card. The compensation law has wording written for construction work in particular. A city license in one metro may mean nothing across the county line. And the way an old floor comes up decides whether a state asbestos rule applies to the job.

Each section below starts with the finding as it was verified, gives the authority, shows the source’s own words, and then turns to what an owner can do with it. For the policies themselves, and how they work for a flooring business anywhere, see the flooring contractor insurance page. The rest of this page keeps to Missouri, whether your work is residential flooring in occupied homes, commercial flooring under a general contractor, carpet installation or tile and stone.

Why a Missouri flooring job’s license question goes to the city or county

Missouri issues no statewide general, building or flooring contractor license or registration. The Missouri Division of Professional Registration’s lists of boards and professions include electrical contractors and interior designers among the construction-adjacent entries, and no general, home improvement or flooring contractor.

Authority: RSMo 94.110

Missing from the state list is not the same as unregulated. The authority to license the trade sits one level down, and the record says so directly.

No state license does not mean no license at all. Missouri law lets its cities license and regulate businesses and trades, and the statute for third-class cities names building contractors and all subcontractors among the trades a city council may license and regulate. The City of St. Louis, for one, requires a construction contracting business to hold a Construction Industry Contractor Graduated Business License, so the rule for a particular job is set by the city or county where the work is done.

“The council shall have power and authority to levy and collect a license tax on … and to levy and collect a license tax and regulate hawkers, peddlers, pawnbrokers … building contractors, stone contractors, plumbing contractors, brick contractors … and all subcontractors”

Look past the older vocabulary in that grant and two phrases stand out for a flooring business: building contractors, and all subcontractors. A council given that power can reach the firm that lays the floor as well as the firm that holds the prime contract. Whether a particular council has used it, and how, is a question for that city.

The City of St. Louis License Collector gives one working example. Its license reaches construction and contracting businesses in the City of St. Louis, which plainly includes flooring installers and general contractors, and its own page puts the requirement in a single line:

“Your business requires a Construction Industry Contractor Graduated Business License (GBL).”

For an owner who works in more than one place, the useful habit is to treat every new city as a new licensing question until its office has answered it. A short routine keeps that manageable:

• Before you bid in a city or county you have not worked in, ask its licensing or permit office what it expects of a business doing flooring there, and note who told you.
• Keep a running sheet of every place that has issued your company something, with the date each item runs out, so the renewal does not surface on the day a job starts.
• When you work under a general contractor, get your own answer. The grant quoted above names subcontractors, so the prime firm’s license may not settle yours.
• Keep the license question and the insurance question apart. A city office answers one and a certificate of insurance answers the other.

That certificate, and the additional insured wording a general contractor often asks for on a commercial job, is covered on the commercial flooring contractor insurance page. The proof a homeowner might want to see is on the residential page.

Missouri flooring work near old paint: the federal renovation rule and the state lead license

EPA administers the lead renovation, repair and painting (RRP) program in Missouri, so the lead-safe certification a flooring firm needs for covered renovation work comes from EPA.

Authority: RSMo 701.312; 40 CFR Part 745

Missouri’s own health department draws the same line on its licensing page, and it does so in a heading rather than a footnote:

“Renovation, Repair and Painting: Regulated by the U.S. EPA”

The state still has a lead program of its own, run by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, and it licenses a different set of people from the ones the federal renovation rule certifies.

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services still runs a lead licensing program of its own: it licenses lead abatement contractors, supervisors, workers, inspectors, risk assessors and project designers. Abatement work needs that state license, and in Missouri only a licensed lead inspector or risk assessor may take paint chip samples, so a flooring job that disturbs painted baseboards or trim in older housing can bring both the federal renovation rule and the state program into play.

“The RRP regulations have not altered federal or state regulations on lead abatement and anyone performing any abatement strategies (removal, replacement, enclosure and encapsulation) must still be licensed by Department of Health and Senior Services and provide notification to the Department as required.”

The detail most likely to catch a flooring crew off guard is the sampling rule. Taking paint chip samples is not a job a crew member can do on the spot in Missouri; the department puts it with licensed people:

“In Missouri, paint chip sampling must be performed by a licensed lead-based paint inspector or risk assessor.”

Floors are seldom painted, but the edges of a room usually are. The baseboard that comes off so a plank floor can run to the wall, the shoe molding, the door casing a crew trims to slide new flooring underneath: those are the surfaces the obligation sentence has in mind. Sorting out which rule, if any, reaches a given job depends on the building and the work, and this page does not make that call for you.

A walkthrough in an older building is the time to settle a few points:

• How old is the structure, and is it housing or a facility children use? The federal rule turns on both.
• Does the scope include removing or cutting painted trim, and if another trade is doing that, which firm?
• Has anyone already had the paint tested, and was it a licensed inspector or risk assessor who did it?
• Which person in your company holds the federal renovation certification, and will that person be on site?

Several of these questions tend to arrive together in older homes, and the residential flooring contractor insurance page spends time on why. Lead-related claims under a general liability policy are a policy question, answered on the general liability page.

Tile, mastic and the removal method under Missouri’s asbestos rules

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources runs the state’s asbestos program, and it reaches flooring removal. Before a demolition or renovation of a regulated structure, a Missouri-certified asbestos inspector must inspect the areas the work will affect, and the department classes resilient floor covering as Category I nonfriable material. So long as they are in good condition and are not made friable, floor tile, sheet vinyl and mastic stay outside the department’s regulation; sanding, grinding, cutting or abrading them makes the work regulated, and regulated removal goes to a registered asbestos abatement contractor with state-certified workers. Most single-family homes are exempt.

Authority: RSMo 643.225; 10 CSR 10-6.241; 10 CSR 10-6.250

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources asbestos program is the state’s own, and its fact sheets speak to flooring in plain terms. The sequence begins before anyone lifts a tile:

“Prior to demolition or renovation activities, regulated structures or those areas that will be subject to demolition or renovation activities must be thoroughly inspected by a Missouri certified asbestos inspector to determine if any asbestos-containing materials are present.”

The same fact sheet places the material a flooring crew handles most often in its first category of nonfriable material:

“Category I nonfriable asbestos-containing material - Asbestos-containing packings, gaskets, *resilient floor covering …”

It also flags a layer that is easy to overlook when an old sheet floor comes up, the backing underneath:

“Any asbestos-containing vapor barrier on resilient floor coverings, such as sheet vinyl or tile, is considered friable asbestos”

From there, the department’s guidance on nonfriable material turns on how the floor comes out. Pulled by hand in whole pieces, tile can leave as an unregulated project:

“Tile may be removed from a structure as an unregulated project if manual methods are used and the tile is removed in largely intact pieces.”

Mastic follows the same logic, with a warning about the tools a crew might reach for:

“Category I Nonfriable Mastic is not regulated by the department as long as the material is in good condition and is not made friable during demolition or renovation activities. This material must not be dry scraped or sanded.”

And once a machine or a blade goes to the material, the answer changes:

“Any activity that would sand, grind, cut or abrade this material during removal would subject it to regulation as RACM. In this event, the project would be required to be performed by a registered asbestos abatement contractor in accordance with all applicable asbestos work practice requirements.”

Read in order, those passages make the removal method part of the bid, not a choice left to the crew lead on the day. A flooring business that is not a registered asbestos abatement contractor has every reason to decide how the old floor comes up before it names a price.

• On a commercial tear-out, ask for the inspection report before you price the removal, and read what it says about every layer, including any backing on sheet flooring.
• Write down the removal method in the proposal itself. If the floor will not come up in whole pieces, stop and talk with the owner before anyone changes tools.
• Share the findings with whoever runs the crew that day. The person with the pry bar is often the first to see a second floor under the first.
• File the inspection report, the proposal and any change order in one place for the job.

Homes are handled differently, and the department states the scope itself:

“The department’s asbestos regulations apply to commercial structures in Missouri and to some residential structures. Most single-family residences are exempt.”

An exemption from a regulation is not a finding about the floor, so a residential crew still chooses how to take up material it knows little about. Older homes get their own treatment on the residential page.

Coverage for an asbestos claim under a general liability policy, and the treatment of finished work once the space is back in use, are policy questions on the general liability page. Working a tear-out under a general contractor adds contract terms, taken up on the commercial page, and demolition of old tile raises its own version of the same questions on the tile and stone page.

The construction wording in Missouri’s workers’ compensation law

Under Missouri law, workers’ compensation is required of the employers it covers, and the law has its own coverage wording for construction-industry employers who erect, demolish, alter or repair improvements, quoted below as printed. A covered employer insures with a carrier authorized to write the coverage in Missouri or qualifies with the Division of Workers’ Compensation to self-insure, and a contractor is treated as the employer of its subcontractors’ employees on the job. Coverage in Missouri comes from the private market; there is no state fund.

Authority: RSMo 287.030.1(3); RSMo 287.280.1; RSMo 287.040.2

The Missouri Division of Workers’ Compensation sets out both tests, the general one and the one for construction, in one sentence on its coverage page:

“In the state of Missouri, any employer with five or more employees and any employer in the construction industry with one or more employees is required to maintain workers’ compensation coverage for its employees.”

The statute behind that sentence ties the construction test to the kind of work, and its verbs are worth reading against the jobs your crews take on:

“except that construction industry employers who erect, demolish, alter or repair improvements shall be deemed an employer for the purposes of this chapter if they have one or more employees.”

So a flooring company should read that wording against its own work before it leans on the general test. Once the duty applies, the law gives an employer two routes to meet it, placing the coverage or carrying it with the division’s approval:

“with some insurance carrier authorized to insure such liability in this state, except that an employer or group of employers may themselves carry the whole or any part of the liability without insurance upon satisfying the division of their ability to do so.”

The cost of skipping both routes is written into the same section. An employer that fails to comply gives up defenses it would otherwise raise in an injured worker’s suit:

“it shall not be a defense that the injury or death was caused by the negligence of a fellow servant, or that the employee had assumed the risk of the injury or death, or that the injury or death was caused to any degree by the negligence of the employee”

A separate section reaches the arrangement most flooring subcontractors work under. When a general contractor brings in a flooring firm, and that firm brings in installers of its own, the law looks up the chain:

“such independent contractor shall be deemed to be the employer of the employees of his subcontractors and their subcontractors when employed on or about the premises where the principal contractor is doing work.”

That passage is the reason to treat a subcontractor’s coverage as a question for the first day of a job, not the last. How subcontracted installers are treated on your own policy, and how an underwriter reads flooring payroll, belongs on the workers’ compensation page, since those are questions about the policy rather than about Missouri.

With no state fund in Missouri, the coverage is placed in the private market with an insurer authorized to write it in the state. Each rule quoted here is Missouri’s own, and a crew that works over the border meets the neighboring state’s law on its own terms.

Which Missouri office to call, and for what

The Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance regulates insurance in Missouri. You can verify an insurance agency’s license, ours included, through NIPR.com.

Every other state body this page relies on holds its own piece of the picture. The links go to each agency’s site, and each role reads as the record verified it:

• Missouri Division of Professional Registration: statewide professional and trade licensing under the Department of Commerce and Insurance (electrical contractors among its boards; no general or flooring contractor license)
• Missouri Department of Natural Resources: state environmental agency; runs the asbestos program
• Missouri Department of Natural Resources asbestos program: asbestos occupation certification, contractor registration, demolition and abatement notifications and work practices
• Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services: state lead licensing program: lead abatement and inspection licensing; RRP itself is EPA-administered
• Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations: parent department of the Division of Workers’ Compensation
• Missouri Division of Workers’ Compensation: workers’ compensation administration and self-insurance approval

Absent from that list are a flooring contractor board, for the reason the licensing section gives, and a state workers’ compensation fund. On an ordinary week the office that matters most is likely the licensing desk of the city where your next job is, and no statewide list can name that one for you.

Missouri metros by county, for a crew that crosses city lines

Below are Missouri’s largest metropolitan areas, as the U.S. Census Bureau delineates them. A metro that spans a state border shows only its Missouri counties, since the licensing finding above puts the rule with those counties and the cities inside them.

Where Missouri’s findings leave a flooring owner’s policies

Those are the places Missouri’s rules come from. What responds when something goes wrong is the set of policies a flooring business carries in any state, each with its own page:

• Injury to other people and damage to their property, including finished work and tear-out: general liability.
• Your own crew, and the subcontracted-installer question: workers’ compensation.
• The saws, sanders and stock that travel from one job to the next: inland marine coverage for contractors’ tools and equipment.

Which of these carries the most weight depends on the kind of flooring you do. Between a carpet installation company and a tile and stone contractor, the jobs differ, the owners differ and the tear-outs differ; each service page takes its trade on its own terms. Once you are ready to line up coverage for Missouri work, start with a quote request.

What the state sets

Where we discuss it

Contractor license No statewide license reaches this work

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General Liability

Lead-safe renovation The federal program applies in this state

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Residential Flooring Contractor Insurance

Asbestos flooring and mastic A state program reaches flooring removal

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General Liability

Workers’ compensation Bought in the open market

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Workers Compensation

A panel for Missouri in rows. Contractor license: no statewide license reaches this work. It connects to the General Liability page. Lead-safe renovation: the federal program applies in this state. It connects to the Residential Flooring Contractor Insurance page. Asbestos flooring and mastic: a state program reaches flooring removal. It connects to the General Liability page. Workers’ compensation: bought in the open market. It connects to the Workers Compensation page. Each row pairs a state rule with the page on this site that discusses it. No figures are shown.