ENR on insurer discounts for jobsite monitoring: real credits, no cameras yet
Engineering News-Record's Bryan Gottlieb found carriers cutting water-damage deductibles in half for sites with leak sensors. The mechanism matters for video agents: underwriters have started pricing continuous monitoring, and video is a form of it.
For anyone selling video agents into construction, the most useful insurance story of 2026 is about water. Bryan Gottlieb's June 25, 2026 report for Engineering News-Record documents a change contractors have waited years for: builders' risk carriers are now offering measurable discounts and better terms to projects that install monitoring technology. Until now the usual arrangement was that carriers required risk controls as a condition of coverage and paid nothing for them.
The hook was a partnership announced the same day between Shepherd, a builders' risk insurer, and Brickeye, a Toronto construction technology firm whose platform uses leak sensors and automatic shutoff valves to catch abnormal water flow. Projects using it qualify for a Shepherd program that reduces water-damage deductibles and adds premium credits. Justin Levine, Shepherd's chief executive, told Gottlieb that projects with the technology "can see water-damage deductibles reduced by 50% or more," and described the aim as bringing behavior-based pricing into commercial insurance.
How common this is
Gottlieb's reporting goes beyond one insurer. Sedat Kunt, who leads Marsh's national builders' risk practice, called monitoring sensors "one of the most significant shifts in builders' risk underwriting" and said adoption on large projects may already be at half or more. Matt Wagner, head of construction property at Zurich North America, described project-specific controls making the difference between a $2 million and a $1 million water-damage deductible on a large job, provided the underwriter has seen the measures work before. Darren Tasker of Allianz Commercial said carriers are increasingly weighing monitoring in their decisions.
The cautious voice is Jason Behrer, who runs builders' risk at Aon. Every carrier is interested, he told ENR, but most are not ready to grant large pricing credits without more performance data.
Why this matters for video
Cameras do not appear in the article. I checked. The technology being rewarded is a water sensor, because water damage is the largest and most predictable builders' risk loss and the sensor's effect on it is easy to measure. That is the standard a video agent will have to meet: a named loss category with a measurable reduction, and a track record long enough that an underwriter is comfortable with the control, as Wagner put it.
The encouraging part is that the pricing mechanism now exists. Carriers have accepted that continuous monitoring on a site changes the risk, and have built programs to reflect it. What a camera agent that watches for unattended hot work, open excavations or workers under suspended loads still lacks is the data set Behrer is waiting for. Brickeye got there with water. I have not found a published equivalent for video, and until one appears the discount conversation for camera-based safety will stay at the interested-but-not-yet stage Behrer describes.
Read the original at Engineering News-Record.