Sunday, February 14, 2016

New safety regs for construction sites

From Crains:

Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city Department of Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler announced stricter rules for construction sites Friday, including quadrupling fines for serious safety violations.

Despite advances in technology and new laws, working on a New York City construction site has become more dangerous during the past decade. After a string of accidents over the past two years, including a fatal crane collapse last week, the de Blasio administration has come under increasing pressure to address the problems.

"No building is worth a person's life," the mayor said in a statement outlining the new measures, which will be phased in during the next few months.

Penalties for serious safety lapses will quadruple to $10,000 from $2,400. Property owners with projects under 10 stories tall, where 70% of accidents happened in 2015, will be required to hire a construction superintendent for all major work (they already had to have one for new construction). The fine for failing to do so will rise to $25,000 from $5,000.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

"No building is worth a person's life" ????
Yeah...right! That's why Duh Blasio follows REBNY's mantra of build more, build quicker, build taller and build more often.
Der Wilhelm says one thing but pockets thousands from REBNY developers.
"Every building,even with its safety hazards, is worth my re-election", would be more like Der Bill's real feelings.

Anonymous said...

oh boy oh boy oh boy

more regs! THAT'S the ticket.

(so much for PR, nothing will change as nothing will be enforced)

Camel bladder said...

The last time we had some crane collapses (two in the same year) the DOB put in new safety rules to address the "problem" such as the requirement that licensed contractors have "special inspectors" hired to inspect certain jobs such as fire sprinkler systems in order to get their jobs signed off. The problem is that the special inspector checks the job at finish not during the installation so I don't really know what the fuck that has to do with job site safety. Also what the fuck does a sprinkler system have to do with crane collapses ? But it made the DOB and their city council overseers feel all good and warm and fuzzy about themselves. And this month we saw how well it worked out, right ?

(sarc) said...

This is not regulations, it is the fines.

This will easily put many legitimate contractors out of business, and that is the purpose.

This will leave only the select few connected contractors to do all the work.

Did you ever notice how each time the government enacts new regulations, only the very large corporations can afford to abide by them?

Something to think about...

Missing Foundation said...

Camel Bladder you should post here more often.

Anonymous said...

Hire competent and sober DOB inspectors.

Anonymous said...

What does a "construction superintendent" actually do?

Dandy said...

Im guessing he deals with a lot of the regulations and inspections.