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Control and automation
If you design control systems, write PLC or SCADA code, specify safety functions or integrate machines into production lines, you need professional indemnity insurance. When that work goes wrong the usual result is a plant that stops, a batch that is lost or a safety system that has to be redesigned, and the claim is for money rather than accidental damage. Public liability is not designed for that. Panel builders who only wire to another firm’s design carry less professional risk, though rarely none.
Part of: Engineers’ professional indemnity insurance
In short
Automation and process control engineers are paid to make plant run safely and to specification, so their mistakes show up as downtime, lost product, delayed commissioning or a safety function that falls short of the risk assessment. Those are professional indemnity claims. Two areas need particular care: functional safety work to BS EN 61511, BS EN ISO 13849-1 or BS EN 62061, and integration that links machines into an assembly, which can make you its manufacturer under the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008. No law requires PI, but end users, OEMs and main contractors usually insist on it.
Last reviewed 5 October 2026 by the Apex professional indemnity team.
Public liability insurance responds to accidental injury and accidental damage to other people’s property. If your engineer drops a control cabinet onto a client’s conveyor during installation, that is a public liability matter. The claims that worry automation businesses look different. A sequence written in the wrong order, an interlock that does not do what the risk assessment assumed, a SCADA alarm that never reaches the operator: any of them can stop a plant without anything being dropped or broken.
What follows is usually financial. Production is lost while the fault is traced. A commissioning window is missed and the client’s own customers go short. An inspection leads to a cell being taken out of use until a guard circuit is redesigned. These allegations go to the quality of your professional work, which is the ground professional indemnity (PI) insurance usually covers: control philosophy, functional design, software, configuration, instrument specification, safety function design and validation, and commissioning.
The boundary is not always clean. If faulty logic ruins a batch of product, the client may frame it as property damage, while public liability wordings often exclude damage arising from design or professional advice. Check how your two policies fit together rather than assuming one will step in for the other.
The examples below are illustrative. They describe the kinds of allegation process control and automation engineers face, not real claims or outcomes.
In every case the claimant is saying your design, code or advice fell short of the standard of a competent control engineer, and that it cost them money.
Control and automation work sits under workplace safety law, product supply law and a family of functional safety standards. These are the ones most often used to measure what you did.
| Reference | What it says | Why it matters for your PI |
|---|---|---|
| PUWER 1998, regulation 18 | Employers must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that control systems are safe and chosen allowing for the failures, faults and constraints expected in use, and that a fault or loss of energy cannot create additional or increased risk. | Your client relies on your design to meet this duty, so a system that fails unsafely puts your work under scrutiny. |
| Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008 | Machinery includes assemblies arranged and controlled so that they function as an integral whole. Before it is placed on the market or put into service, the manufacturer must compile a technical file, carry out conformity assessment, draw up a declaration of conformity and apply the UKCA or CE marking. | Integrating machines can make you the manufacturer of the assembly. |
| Same Regulations, regulation 8 | Partly completed machinery comes with a declaration of incorporation and assembly instructions rather than a declaration of conformity. | Whoever incorporates it takes on the safety of the finished machine. |
| BS EN ISO 13849-1:2023 | A methodology for designing and integrating the safety-related parts of machinery control systems, including software. | The common reference for interlocks, light curtains and emergency stops. |
| BS EN IEC 62061:2021+A2:2026 | Requirements for the design, integration and validation of safety-related control systems for machines. | Underwriters may ask which machinery standard you design to. |
| BS EN 61511-1:2017+A1:2017 | Requirements for the specification, design, installation, operation and maintenance of safety instrumented systems in the process industry sector. | SIS and SIL work is high consequence and is asked about separately. |
| HSE OG86 | HSE’s operational guidance on cyber security for industrial automation and control systems, published in March 2017 and available to COMAH operators. | On major hazard sites, remote access and network design are treated as part of plant safety. |
| Usually covered by PI | Often excluded or limited | Needs a different policy |
|---|---|---|
| Errors in control philosophy, functional design and PLC, DCS or SCADA software | Uncapped liability for downtime or lost production that you accepted by contract | Accidental damage to plant during installation (public liability) |
| Safety function design, verification and validation, where declared | Safety instrumented system work that was not declared, or that the wording restricts | Injury to your own engineers on site (employers’ liability) |
| Instrument and valve specification, sizing and datasheets | Performance guarantees, such as a promised line speed, and fitness for purpose terms | Injury caused by an assembly you supplied as its manufacturer (product liability) |
| Commissioning errors and wrong advice during start-up | The cost of correcting your own code or rewiring your own panels | Attacks on your own systems and data (cyber insurance) |
| Defence costs, including expert evidence on software and functional safety | Work at sites in the USA or Canada, unless agreed | Panels damaged in transit or on site before handover (goods in transit or contract works) |
Cover always depends on the insurer’s acceptance and the policy terms. Make sure the business description on your policy covers everything you do: “control panel manufacture” is not the same as “control system design and software”, and neither obviously includes functional safety.
Integration is where automation engineers most often take on more liability than they realise. Under the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008, machines that are “arranged and controlled so that they function as an integral whole” count as machinery in their own right. Someone has to act as manufacturer of that assembly: assess its conformity, compile the technical file, issue the declaration of conformity and apply the marking.
HSE’s guidance on in situ assembly says the person who constitutes an assembly of machinery is considered its manufacturer, responsible for making sure the assembly as a whole complies, including the safety of the interfaces between its units. Machines that are merely connected, each still working independently, are not an assembly in this sense. Machines delivered as partly completed machinery leave the final step to whoever incorporates them.
What that means for your insurance:
HSE treats BS EN 61508 as the general benchmark of good practice for safety systems, and BS EN 61511 as the benchmark for managing functional safety in the process industries. The BS EN 61511 lifecycle runs from hazard and risk assessment through specification, design, installation, commissioning and validation to operation, proof testing and modification, and it sets requirements for the competence of the people and organisations involved.
That lifecycle shapes how a claim is argued. If you wrote the safety requirements specification, carried out SIL verification or acted as functional safety assessor, your work will be read against the steps you were responsible for. Because a failure here can contribute to a major accident, insurers ask about it in its own right:
Answer those questions fully. A policy issued on a description that left functional safety out may not respond when it is needed.
Your limit is usually driven by the contracts you sign. End users, OEMs and main contractors set PI requirements in their terms, and manufacturers and utilities often want more for safety-critical or site-wide control work. Three things matter as much as the headline figure:
Because PI is claims-made, a logic error built into a system today could produce a claim long after the project closed, and it will fall on whatever policy you hold then. Keep cover continuous, and arrange run-off if you close or sell the business; see run-off cover explained.
A complete proposal gets better terms than a bare one, and a broker can only present what you tell us. Have these ready:
Speak to a broker
PI for process control and automation engineers, placed by a named broker
Start the online proposal and save it as you go, or leave your number and a named broker will call you back, usually the same working day.
Apex Insurance Brokers is an independent insurance broker based in Bristol, established in 2009 and authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. We are not tied to one insurer: we work with over 30 markets, including Lloyd’s syndicates through wholesale brokers, and every client has a named broker who handles the placement, mid-term changes, certificates for clients and the renewal.
Yes, if you design control systems, write PLC, DCS or SCADA software, specify instruments or safety functions, or integrate machines. Errors in that work tend to cause downtime and lost production rather than accidental damage, which is what PI is for. Panel builders working only to another firm’s design have less exposure, but rarely none.
No law requires process control or automation engineers to carry PI. In practice end users, OEMs, system integrators and main contractors usually make it a condition of contract, often asking for higher limits on safety-critical, site-wide or major hazard work.
It can, if your policy describes functional safety as part of your business and you declared it accurately. Insurers ask about it separately because of what a failure could lead to, so tell them which lifecycle phases you handle, which standards you work to and whether you work on major hazard sites.
You may be. Under the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008, machines arranged and controlled to function as an integral whole count as machinery, and HSE says the person who constitutes such an assembly is considered its manufacturer. Agree the role in writing and insure it.
PI may respond where the stoppage results from negligence in your design or software, subject to the policy terms and your limit. Many contracts exclude loss of production and profit between the parties, and agreeing that exclusion is an important protection for an automation business.
A claim that your negligent remote access arrangements let attackers into a client’s plant may fall under PI, depending on the wording, though some PI policies exclude cyber events. Your own losses, such as restoring your systems, need cyber insurance. Review both policies together.
Apex arranges professional indemnity insurance for process control and automation engineers across the UK. Tell us about your work and we’ll find cover that fits. Or call 0117 325 0027.
Start your PI proposal Call 0117 325 0027Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales, company number 07014570. This page is general information, not advice on your individual circumstances. Cover is always subject to the insurer’s acceptance and the policy terms, and this page does not guarantee that cover will be available or on what terms.
