With information technology projects, many chief financial officers budget for two or three times the original estimate to compensate for the high risk involved, according to Gladwyne Surety. Travelers Property Casualty Corp. and other large insurers are starting to offer some information technology insurance. But Goldman said his company was one of the few focusing exclusively on such undertakings. It's one of those things everybody thinks they know how to do until they actually do it. The vast majority of that spending covered construction projects, while the rest was related to janitorial, food and other services, said Robert Duke, the association's director of underwriting.
Federal law requires that federal building projects be bonded.
The number of private construction projects being bonded is rising as property owners increasingly seek protection from projects gone wrong, Duke said. Like construction, information technology projects can be prone to veering off course. The notion that more formal processes are needed for evaluating vendors and projects is gaining acceptance in the industry, said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America. Standish examined projects such as the development of billings systems, customer relations management systems, and enterprise resource planning systems. Johnson said it could be a challenge for Gladwyne to persuade firms to spend money on information technology insurance or risk-management services.