How to Vet a Marine Contractor's Insurance and Licensing

At minimum, commercial general liability of $1M per occurrence / $2M aggregate with 'marine' or 'in-water' operations explicitly listed (standard general-construction policies often exclude waterborne work), plus workers' compensation on the whole crew and any subcontractors. Ask them to name you as additional insured for the project. If they can't produce a current certificate within a day, walk away.

Texas doesn't license marine contractors at the state level — there's no contractor-license number to verify like in Florida or Louisiana. The functional equivalents are an active LLC or business registration, a current sales-tax permit, a Master Electrician license for dock electrical (held by the contractor or a named sub), and a documented permit history with the lake authority, which is the closest thing to industry credentialing here.

A clear line-item scope (not a lump sum), a payment schedule tied to milestones rather than arbitrary dates, a written change-order process, and a defined dispute-resolution mechanism. Treat a demand for full payment upfront or a refusal to itemize the scope as warning signs. Verify current insurance certificates and recent local references before you sign.

Standard general-construction policies frequently exclude waterborne or in-water work, so a contractor with only a general policy doing dock work is effectively uninsured for the actual job. Read the COI carefully — 'waterfront construction,' 'marine construction,' or 'dock construction' should appear as an authorized operation, not just 'general construction.' We carry marine-specific coverage and our COI says so.

Proceed carefully. Texas doesn't require workers' comp at the state level, and that 1099 structure can be legitimate in some cases, but it shifts injury liability to you as the property owner if a court finds the 1099 status doesn't hold up. A single back injury during dock framing could become your problem. We carry workers' comp on all employees and require it from every subcontractor.

Performance bonds aren't standard on residential waterfront work, but they should be in place on commercial, HOA, or any project above $150,000. The bond protects you if the contractor walks off mid-job — the bonding company steps in and completes the work. Below that threshold, your protection comes from insurance verification, milestone payments, and itemized scope instead.

On East Texas reservoirs, permitting relationships with the lake authority are the closest thing to industry licensing. A contractor who has pulled 50-plus TRWD permits is functionally credentialed; one who's never submitted to the authority is functionally not. Ask for the authority pull history — a real local contractor will have it documented and can produce it.

Contractor workmanship warranties typically run one to three years; we carry three on all new builds. Separate from that, the manufacturer warranties on installed materials transfer to you on completion. Read the actual warranty document rather than the marketing brochure that summarizes it, because the document is what's binding.

A reference list only helps if you call it, and the calls that matter are about recent, comparable, local work — not a glowing quote from five years and three lakes away. Ask for properties they built on your lake in the last few years, then ask whether the timeline was accurate, whether there were change orders, and how they handled the one thing that went wrong. Every project has a hiccup; how they handled it is the real signal.

Marine-specific liability coverage, workers' comp on the whole crew, and a real authority relationship all cost the contractor money — money that shows up in the price. A bid that undercuts the field by a wide margin is sometimes efficient and often just uninsured or unpermitted, with the savings coming straight out of your protection. When you normalize bids onto one scope and check each bidder's paper, the cheap outlier frequently turns out to be missing the coverage, not just the markup.

No current certificate of insurance within a day of asking, a general-construction policy with no marine or in-water operation listed, no workers' comp paired with a hand-wave about 1099 crew, no LLC or sales-tax registration, and no documented history with the lake authority. Any one merits a hard question; a cluster of them means walk away. Each maps to a specific way a waterfront job becomes your financial problem.

Within 24 hours of your request. Producing a current COI is the most basic professional-operations bar in the industry, so if a contractor can't or won't supply one within a day, walk away. The certificate should also name you, the homeowner or property owner, as an additional insured for the duration of the project.