Mountain View — Contractors Insurance CA

Local permitting and compliance

The figures below are the minimums a city commonly requires before it issues a permit. They are not a recommendation and not a coverage benchmark — several are decades old, and none of them reflect what a general contractor's subcontract, a lender or an owner will require on the same job. Treat $1,000,000 per occurrence as the practical floor for commercial general liability and confirm the current municipal requirement with the department named before you rely on any figure here. What is published here may also be out of date or contain errors, and requirements vary by city, county, state, agency, project and contract, among other things — verifying what applies to your own job, with the permitting agency and your own contract documents, is your responsibility.

Mountain View's own permitting and inspection process runs through Mountain View Community Development Dept. — separate from CSLB licensing, which applies statewide regardless of city. PG&E is the utility of record here for coordination on any work near power or gas lines.

Mountain View's process is worth confirming directly with Mountain View Community Development Dept. rather than assuming it matches what a nearby city requires, especially since work in a public right-of-way commonly needs its own separate encroachment permit.

Mountain View asks for more cover than almost any comparable city, and the schedule is the first thing to plan around: the city tells applicants that a typical excavation permit takes three to six months to obtain, with completeness review in five-business-day cycles and code compliance review in six-week cycles, each resubmittal restarting a cycle. On insurance, the certificate generally needs $2 million general liability per occurrence against a $4 million general aggregate, $1 million automobile, $1 million workers compensation — and $1 million pollution coverage, which is genuinely unusual for routine right-of-way work and is not carried on many contractors' standard programs. Separate commercial general liability and automobile liability endorsements naming the City as additional insured are typically required, with the contractor's coverage primary at least as broad as ISO CG 20 01 04 13. Where a faithful performance bond is required it is generally set at 100% of the approved construction estimate, and the surety normally must appear on the US Treasury's Circular 570 listing of approved sureties, be licensed in California, and carry an underwriting limitation above the bond amount. A pre-construction meeting is usually arranged at least three days before work, on (650) 903-6311.