Directional Drilling Insurance in Kansas

In most states the fight over a certificate is a fight about inference: the indemnity clause is void, the additional-insured requirement sits beside it untouched, and everyone argues about whether the second is doing the work of the first. Kansas removed the inference. Its statute is titled to cover indemnification provisions and additional insured provisions, and subsection (c) voids a requirement that one party carry another as an additional insured for that other party’s own negligence or intentional acts.

The dig law is organized differently from its neighbors too, sorting facilities into tiers before it sorts out responsibility, and bounding the notice window at both ends. K.S.A. 16-121 reaches the endorsement and K.S.A. 66-1802 the facility tiers. The bore they are both organized around is on the Directional Drilling Insurance pillar and the pollution liability page.

The statute that names the endorsement

K.S.A. 16-121 opens by defining the contracts it governs. A construction contract means an agreement for the design, construction, alteration, renovation, repair or maintenance of a building, structure, highway, road, bridge, water line, sewer line, oil line, gas line, appurtenance or other improvement to real property, including any moving, demolition or excavation. The definition excludes a deed, lease, easement, license or other instrument granting an interest in property even where it includes a right to build on that property, and it carves out two specific things: dirt or gravel roads used to access oil and gas wells, and oil flow lines or gas gathering lines used between the wellhead and oil storage facilities or gas transmission lines.

Read those exclusions and the reach becomes clearer rather than narrower. The legislature identified two categories of linear work it wanted outside the statute, both of them oilfield gathering infrastructure, and communications is not among them. A carve-out is unnecessary for work a statute never covered, so the presence of these two is evidence that ordinary buried linear work is inside. The residual phrase does the rest, and it is worth noting that Kansas’s own damage prevention chapter defines the facilities it protects to include lines used for transmitting or distributing communication.

Subsection (b) states the indemnity rule: an indemnification provision in a contract which requires the promisor to indemnify the promisee for the promisee’s negligence or intentional acts or omissions is against public policy and void and unenforceable. Reaching intentional acts is more than most states do — many stop at negligence and leave deliberate conduct to the general law.

Then subsection (c), which is the reason this page exists. A provision in a contract which requires a party to provide liability coverage to another party, as an additional insured, for such other party’s own negligence or intentional acts or omissions is against public policy and is void and unenforceable. Seventeen states on this site have produced roughly eleven different answers to the additional-insured question, and most of those answers had to be assembled from a savings clause, a silence, or a case. Kansas put it in the statute in one sentence.

For a boring subcontractor that changes the shape of a negotiation. Elsewhere the practical advice is to read the endorsement carefully because the statute may not reach it. Here the advice is that a demand for additional-insured coverage answering for the prime’s own fault is void by its terms, and a prime insisting on it is asking for something the legislature has already refused. What remains ordinary and enforceable is coverage responding to your work — which is what an additional-insured endorsement is properly for.

Subsection (d) preserves a practical list: railroad protective and general liability obligations; an owner’s, responsible party’s or governmental entity’s indemnity of a contractor for strict liability under environmental laws; settlement-based indemnification meeting three stated conditions; the validity of insurance contracts, construction bonds and other agreements lawfully issued by an insurer or bonding company; and a separately negotiated allocation of risk that is based on generally accepted industry loss experience and supported by adequate consideration. That last one is a quiet invitation to negotiate rather than to sign a form, and it is the only route by which a broader allocation survives.

A dig law that sorts facilities before it sorts blame

Kansas’s underground utility damage prevention act sits at K.S.A. 66-1801 and following, administered and enforced by the State Corporation Commission. Notice mechanics look familiar at first and are not.

The notice window closes as well as opens. Under K.S.A. 66-1804 an excavator shall serve notice of intent of excavation at least two full working days but not more than 20 calendar days before the scheduled excavation start date on each operator having underground tier 1 facilities in the proposed area, and may serve the same notice on operators of tier 2 facilities. On a linear build sequenced around permits and traffic control, the upper bound is the one that catches people: a ticket pulled early for a segment that then slips is not a compliant ticket when the drill finally turns.

The tiering is a real distinction, not a label. The mandatory duty attaches to tier 1 facilities and the same notice is permissive as to tier 2. A crew that assumes one notice discharges every obligation under a street is assuming something the section does not say, and the difference is worth establishing per route rather than per company.

An operator that does not answer loses most of its claim. If an operator fails to comply with the relevant subsections of K.S.A. 66-1804, or tells the excavator it has no underground facilities in the area of the planned excavation, the excavator may proceed and shall not be liable to that operator for any direct or indirect damages resulting from contact with its facilities — except in cases of gross negligence or willful and wanton conduct. That exception is a high bar. Ordinary carelessness by the crew does not restore the operator’s claim, which makes the operator’s own response, or its silence, one of the most valuable facts in a Kansas strike file.

What happens after contact is prescribed. Under K.S.A. 66-1810, when any contact with or damage to an underground facility occurs the excavator shall immediately notify the operator and the notification center, and on receiving that notice the operator shall immediately dispatch personnel to provide necessary temporary or permanent repair. In setting penalties the Commission considers the appropriateness of the penalty to the size of the business charged, the gravity of the violation, and the good faith of the person charged in attempting to achieve compliance — a proportionality test rather than a schedule.

What a Kansas program has to carry

The contractors who reach us in Kansas are usually mid-project, holding a certificate a prime has refused and an agent who cannot explain why re-issuing it will not help. The reason is that Kansas closed the door most states leave open, and neither side has noticed. A prime working from a national form asks for additional-insured coverage answering for its own fault because that demand is enforceable nearly everywhere else; §16-121(c) makes it void here. The document is not the problem and re-issuing it changes nothing, because what is being asked for is not something a certificate can lawfully deliver in this state.

Because the statute is unusually clear on the transfer, a Kansas program is specified against your own work rather than against a negotiation.

Pollution liability carries the exposure neither chapter addresses. §16-121 allocates contractual responsibility and the damage prevention act governs facility strikes; a drilling fluid release into groundwater or into a creek is outside both, and the general liability form is written to exclude it. General liability is specified to respond to your work, which is exactly the scope subsection (c) leaves untouched. Contractors equipment matters because the operator-default rule in 66-1804 addresses your liability to the operator and says nothing about your own tooling or the days lost waiting on a repair the operator controls.

Three checks run on a Kansas file. We read the insurance requirement against subsection (c) before anything else, because a demand that is void does not need to be priced. We ask whether the route’s facilities are tier 1 or tier 2, since the notice duty differs. And we look at how ticket timing is managed against the 20-calendar-day ceiling on a sequenced build.

A Kansas note for contract review. There is no statewide fiber-specific contractor license to lean on here, so the awarding party’s contract sets the qualification bar — and that same contract is where a void additional-insured demand will usually be found, written by someone drafting for a different state.

K.S.A. 16-121 names the endorsement and K.S.A. 66-1802 sorts facilities into tiers; both are about the hole in the ground. What a Kansas account looks like away from it is on our Kansas fiber contractor insurance page.

Why Fiber Optic Guard Insurance

What we actually do on a Kansas file: read the additional-insured requirement against §16-121(c) first, because in this state that clause is capable of being void on its face; establish tier 1 against tier 2 for the facilities on the route, since the notice duty is not uniform; and set the pollution line against a release exposure neither statute limits. If a prime is insisting on additional-insured coverage for its own fault, send that contract — Kansas has already answered it.

Frequently asked questions about Kansas directional drilling insurance