Income Protection For Curtain Walling Installers
Curtain walling is the glass skin of a building, and it goes on from the outside, upward.
Units are large, heavy and completely unforgiving: they cannot be flexed, dropped or caught on a corner. They are placed using suction lifters from a mast climber, a cradle or a hoist, at height, on an exposed elevation.
Wind is the variable that turns a controlled lift into a dangerous one, because a glass panel is a sail.
The short answer
Curtain walling installers build the glazed envelope of commercial buildings, placing large heavy glass units into aluminium framing at height using suction lifters and hoists. The combination of weight, fragility and wind is what makes it distinct from ordinary glazing. Income protection replaces part of your earnings if illness or injury stops you working.
What actually stops you working
- Crush injuries from glass units shifting or breaking during placement
- Severe lacerations from broken glass, which in large units can be life threatening
- Falls from mast climbers, cradles and the leading edge of the facade
- Back and shoulder injuries from manoeuvring units and framing at height
- Hand and wrist injuries from framing, fixings and handling equipment
- Hand-arm vibration from drilling and fixing into structural frame daily
- Being stood down after a glass breakage or dropped object incident
Sick pay, if you get any
Installers work for facade and curtain walling specialists, with a substantial day-rate and travelling component. Employed installers may have a contractual period; day-rate installers have nothing, and earnings often include travel and lodging that sick pay would not reflect.
Why the definition of incapacity decides it
Own occupation is the right definition. An installer who can no longer work at height or handle heavy units is employable in plenty of jobs and cannot do facade work, which an any occupation policy would treat as fit for work while specialist day rates disappear.
Wind Turns A Panel Into A Sail
This is the factor that separates curtain walling from glazing at ground level, and it governs whether work can happen at all.
A large glass unit presents a flat face to the wind. On an exposed elevation at height, a gust acting on that face can overcome the grip of suction lifters or pull a unit out of a controlled path, with the installer attached to the handling equipment. That is why glazing operations have wind speed limits and why work stops when they are exceeded.
For income protection the relevance is twofold. The serious injuries in this trade are crush and laceration from units rather than the strains that dominate most trades, so absences are long when they happen. And wind stoppages make the income uneven, which matters for how the figure is evidenced.
Glass Lacerations Are Not Ordinary Cuts
It is worth being plain about this because the trade's minor injuries and its serious ones look like the same category and are not.
A failing large unit produces edges capable of severing tendons and major blood vessels. The trade's worst non-fatal outcomes are permanent loss of hand function and significant blood loss, and they happen in seconds during an otherwise routine lift.
That is an argument for considering critical illness cover alongside income protection rather than instead of it, because a permanent hand impairment is a change of career rather than an absence. Whether a specific policy responds depends on what it lists and how it defines loss of use, which is worth reading and which we would go through.
If you stop
The facade is usually on the critical path because the building cannot be made weathertight or fitted out behind it until the glass is in. A specialist short is replaced immediately, and a day-rate installer who misses a package often misses the next one too.
What A Household Is Left With In This Trade
Day-rate installers have no death in service, and they make up a large share of facade work.
The earnings are specialist and usually good, so the sum needed to replace them is correspondingly large, and the work involves travel which means households often depend on one income.
Where cover exists through a facade specialist, it is worth knowing the figure and remembering it ends with the employment, which in package-based work changes often.
A Lump Sum After A Hand Or A Fall
Two events end careers here: a serious laceration or crush injury to the hands, and a fall from the facade.
Both are survivable and both frequently leave permanent consequences in somebody who is otherwise young and fit, which is a change of direction rather than a period of absence.
A lump sum funds that, and arrives on diagnosis rather than after a deferred period. Facade experience moves into supervision, surveying and setting out, estimating, and technical and specification work for systems manufacturers.
Common questions
Can a curtain walling installer get income protection?+
It is worth asking. Working at height with large heavy glass units is a genuine consideration and acceptance and terms are the insurer's decision. Saying what access you work from gets a more accurate answer than a generic description.
Why does wind matter so much?+
Because a large glass unit presents a flat face to it. At height on an exposed elevation a gust can overcome suction lifters or pull a unit off a controlled path with the installer attached to the equipment, which is why glazing has wind speed limits.
How is this different from glazing?+
Scale, height and access. Domestic glazing handles units a person can manage at ground level; curtain walling places very large units into framing from mast climbers and cradles, where weight and wind both work against you.
Should I consider critical illness cover as well?+
It is worth looking at here, because the trade's worst non-fatal outcomes are permanent hand impairment and the effects of a fall, which are a change of career rather than an absence. Whether a policy responds depends on what it lists and how it defines loss of use.
I am on day rates and travel. What should I insure?+
What you actually earn across a full year including travel and lodging, evidenced, and allowing for wind stoppages that make the income uneven. Benefit is normally measured against actual earnings at claim.
Cover that often goes with this
The gaps we most often find sitting next to this one.