Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Surveyors: public liability requirements in South Australia

Cover for legal liability to third parties for personal injury or property damage arising from business activities.

Data as at

Verified for South Australia

  • Licence liability condition: Yes, but structured unlike anywhere else in the country. Section 19 of the Survey Act 1992 provides that a surveyor must not practise surveying unless an agreement is in force between the surveyor and a person approved by the Institution of Surveyors, and the Institution is satisfied that by virtue of that agreement the surveyor will be compensated to the extent required by the Institution in the event that the surveyor suffers loss by reason of civil liability incurred in the practice of surveying. The word insurance does not appear in the Act at all — the obligation is an approved indemnity arrangement mediated by the professional body, with the adequacy standard set by the Institution rather than by a figure in the statute. SA · effective 2026-08-24 South Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: The agreement must be in force at all times the surveyor practises. The Institution of Surveyors, not the Act, sets the level and is the body that has to be satisfied of it. SA · effective 2026-08-24 South Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: Surveyors in South Australia practise under the Survey Act 1992, and the Institution of Surveyors has a statutory role in the indemnity requirement rather than a purely professional one. SA · effective 2026-08-24 South Australia Government · 2026-08-24

What contracts commonly ask for

Principals and head contractors set their own insurance requirements, and those are frequently higher than a licence condition. The requirement that binds is the higher of the two, and both have to be read from the actual document.

What this cover costs

This site publishes no cost benchmark for this cover. A benchmark needs a real sample of documents, and none is published until the sample is large enough to compute a median honestly. A benchmark from a handful of policies is a guess with a decimal point.

Sources