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Adapt every section, rename it and make it yours. Starter language only. Have an attorney licensed in your state review this before you use it. The original stays unchanged.
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A Priority Service Agreement names you as the first call when something goes wrong, and it's signed before the loss ever happens. That's about as strong a position as you can hold with a facility manager. This is the starter and checklist for that agreement: the clauses to include and why. It is a starting point, not a finished contract. The starter document is titled a First-Priority Emergency Response Service Agreement, the same instrument the library calls a Priority Service Agreement.
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Reviewed October 2026. Licensing, assignment, price-gouging and anti-indemnity laws change, and they vary by state. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with your state agency or a construction attorney before you rely on it.
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It establishes you as the pre-agreed emergency-response provider for a building or portfolio. When a pipe bursts at 2 a.m., the facility team calls the name written into their emergency plan instead of searching for a restoration company. You want that name to be yours (see The Pre-Loss Plan: Your Easiest Door Into Commercial).
Parties and property. Owner or manager, the contractor, and the specific building or portfolio covered. If the agreement names a portfolio that crosses state lines, confirm you hold the license each of those states requires for the work described, and write the license numbers into the agreement by state. In California, Business and Professions Code 7031(a) bars an unlicensed contractor from suing to collect at all, regardless of the merits, and 7031(b) lets the party who hired you recover everything already paid. In Florida, unlicensed contracting during a declared state of emergency is a third-degree felony under Florida Statutes 489.127(2)(c). A pre-loss agreement is exactly where a contractor signs up for a building in a state where it cannot legally perform.
Scope of services. Emergency mitigation, stabilization, and the services you will provide on call (extraction, drying, board-up, and the like).
Response commitment. Your guaranteed response time and the direct contact, available around the clock. This is the promise that earns the agreement, so only promise what you can staff at 3 a.m. in February.
Put the regional event carve-out in the same clause. A two-hour response time is honest for a single pipe break and dishonest across forty buildings in one hurricane path. Define a separate response standard for a declared or regional catastrophe, say how you will prioritize when several covered buildings are hit at once, and tell the client the order in advance. A facility manager who was told up front will usually accept being third in line. Finding out at hour twelve is what loses the account.
Pricing basis. How work is billed: time and material on a published rate sheet, or unit pricing. If you reference an estimating platform's line items, verify the codes and rates against your own current price list before the sheet goes into an exhibit. Published code lists change, and the payer will strike any rate your team cannot defend. Attach the rate sheet as an exhibit, date it, and say how and when it can be revised.
Build the emergency pricing rule into this clause, not into a footnote. Price gouging caps switch on once an emergency is declared, and what they allow is set state by state. California is the one read against the statute here. California Penal Code 396 caps increases at 10 percent above the pre-declaration price, and for repair and reconstruction services that cap runs for 180 days after the declaration and can be extended. A rate sheet that escalates automatically during a catastrophe (CAT) event is the clause that turns a good account into a price gouging complaint. Write the cap into the agreement and train the person who quotes.
Program fee, if any. Say in writing whether the agreement is free to sign or carries a fee, what any fee buys (plan maintenance, drills, a higher tier of response), and what the client gets back if you miss the response commitment. Both models are in use, and the price is yours to set. What matters is that the decision maker can read the terms before the loss.
Authorization and access. Pre-authorization to begin emergency stabilization, plus agreed site-access and security procedures.
Insurance and assignment. Your insurance and certifications, and, where the law allows it, the customer's written direction for the insurer to pay you directly.
Spell out what "where the law allows it" means inside the clause rather than leaving it to the reader. In Florida, section 627.7152(13) bars a policyholder from assigning post-loss benefits under any residential or commercial property policy issued on or after January 1, 2023. A boilerplate assignment paragraph in a Florida agreement is unenforceable and it makes the rest of your paperwork look careless. A direction to pay, which asks the carrier to send the check to you while the insured keeps the claim, is a different instrument than an assignment. Whether it survives depends on the state where the building sits.
The same clause is where contractors drift into adjusting. Texas Insurance Code 4102.163(a) bars a contractor from acting as a public adjuster on a property it is also servicing, and holding an adjuster license does not cure it. The Texas Supreme Court upheld that on June 7, 2024, in Texas Department of Insurance v. Stonewater Roofing. Florida draws a narrower line: on residential and condominium unit owner policies, section 626.854(16) bars a licensed contractor from advertising, soliciting, offering to handle, handling or performing public adjuster services unless it holds a public adjuster license, and 626.854(19) limits that subsection to those policies. The commercial buildings this agreement covers are not exempt from the adjusting line: acting as a public adjuster in Florida without a license is a third-degree felony on any insurance claim, commercial included (section 626.8738). Document the damage, write your scope, and let the insured or a licensed independent adjuster negotiate the claim.
On the insurance you carry and the insurance you require: additional insured status, primary and non-contributory wording, and waiver of subrogation exist only as carrier endorsements. A certificate does not create them. The ACORD 25 form says on its face that it confers no rights upon the certificate holder. A waiver of subrogation has to be in force before the loss to matter afterward. Ask for the endorsement, not the certificate.
Term and renewal. The term, auto-renewal, and a renewal-conversation trigger 90 days out (see The MSA Renewal Playbook).
Standard of care. Work follows recognized industry standards; deviations are documented (see the Template: Deviation-from-Standard Form).
Limitation of liability. A clause capping the contractor's maximum liability at the amount actually paid for the project giving rise to the claim. Common in commercial agreements, and not universally enforceable. States limit how far a construction contract can shift risk. California Civil Code 2782 voids an indemnity clause that tries to cover the promisee's own sole negligence or willful misconduct in a construction contract, and your state may have its own anti-indemnity statute with different reach, so look up yours. Expect a sophisticated owner to negotiate the cap and the carve-outs.
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One signature on this agreement closes three questions at once: a liability cap, an auto-renewal that extends the agreement while nobody is watching, and the assignment or direction-to-pay language above. The California and Florida rules on this page are cited to the statute text; confirm them for your state and your job. What this page cannot tell you is how far your state lets a cap reach, what notice your state requires before an auto-renewal binds you for another term, and whether a post-loss assignment is available at all on that coverage line, since Florida (627.7152(13)), Louisiana (R.S. 22:1275) and Oklahoma (36 O.S. 1230(B), effective November 1, 2025, per the state's Bulletin 2025-07) bar post-loss assignment on commercial property policies, and your state may restrict it in ways this page has not checked. A state missing from that list is not a state without a rule. This is not legal advice. Before your name goes on it, run it past a lawyer who handles construction work in your state.
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