Hi-tech building enforcement happening

From the Daily News:

The non-union Rhode Island-based Gilbane is currently building all over the city, including Hudson Yards on the far West Side and an expansion of New York-Presbyterian Hospital on the Upper East Side. After the crowbar incident, the Department of Buildings searched its internal system to locate every Gilbane site in the city.

They found 14 sites, and over the span of four weeks, inspectors were able to gain access to 12. There they uncovered 49 hazardous violations and issued 13 partial or full stop-work orders at four locations.

At one, a Gilbane site in Hell’s Kitchen, where luxury condos are under construction, inspectors were forced to issue partial stop-work orders three times within a month. They also learned a worker at the site had been hospitalized in April after injuring his head while delivering sheetrock.

The Gilbane sweep is part of a new tech-savvy approach Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler is taking to find and shut down dangerous job sites citywide. Currently the public can check the safety of a site via the department’s public records system by entering the site address. Looking at a contractor’s safety record at multiple sites is impossible.

Eight months ago, the department's chief of enforcement, Tim Hogan, began mining inspection data to find contractors with patterns of unsafe conditions.

Officials say Gilbane got the message. During the first week of inspections, 12 Gilbane sites produced 19 hazardous violations and six stop-work orders. By week four, the sweeps produced nine violations at six sites and only one stop-work order.

Could a Grenfell situation happen here?

From CBS 2:

The entire 24-hour Grenfell Tower was engulfed in flames in less than an hour, and the fire was the deadliest in Britain in more than a century.

With so many skyscrapers in New York City, could a similar thing happen? And what should people do in the event of such an emergency?

CBS2’s Elise Finch found out.

The cause of the Grenfell Tower fire is still being investigated. But early reports suggest an external building material called cladding may be to blame.

In a recent renovation, insulation sandwiched between two aluminum panels was used on the building’s façade, and it is that material that is believed to have accelerated the blaze.

Similar cladding is used on many New York buildings – including high-rises. So could a similar fire happen in New York?

Worker dies in "completely preventable" accident

From the Daily News:

A city hardhat plummeted 18 feet to his death Wednesday in what city officials called a “completely preventable” construction accident in Times Square.

Jose Cruz, 59, of Sunset Park, was helping remove part of a steel deck from a slab at 1604 Broadway, near W. 49th St., at about 11:05 a.m., when he fell from an I-beam near the second floor, officials said.

He died at Mount Sinai West.

“We think it was completely preventable,” said city Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler.

“There should have been tie offs with his personal protection equipment, which he was wearing.”

In March 2016, the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) hit Streamline USA with seven violations dubbed "serious" after its inspectors responded to a complaint about unsafe job conditions at the 1604 Broadway site. The agency hit the company with $19,200 in fines which Streamline is contesting.

2 workers die on Briarwood construction project

From Eyewitness News:

Two construction workers were killed after a steel beam fell on top of a crane's operator cab in Queens Tuesday.

It happened just after 12 p.m. near the intersection of 82nd Avenue and 134th Street in the Briarwood section, close to where the Van Wyck Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway intersect.

Department of Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler said the 6,500-pound beam dropped from the fourth floor of the building onto the crane.

Chandler said it appears the rigging rope may have failed while the beam was being lifted, causing the piece of steel to break loose and fall to the ground. Though, the investigation is still ongoing. Wind does not appear to be a factor in the accident.

"It was a 6,500-pound beam going up four stories. I would say the wind would not have a major factor on that," said Chandler.

The workers killed were identified as flag man Alessandro Ramos, 43, and crane operator George Smith, 47. Both were trapped in the wreckage and died at the scene.

Crains reports that this isn't the first work-related death for the contractor.

City bans 2 engineers

From Crains:

The city banned two construction engineers who submitted falsified plans to the Department of Buildings and signed off on unsafe blueprints—sometimes without even reviewing them—officials announced Tuesday.

"These individuals abused their privileges as licensed engineers, and put expediency and profit ahead of work-site safety," said Rick Chandler, commissioner of the department, in a statement.

Since last year, the Buildings Department has been cracking down on shady construction professionals. Its efforts have led to actions against 59 individuals. Stricter rules for construction sites were also implemented, including quadrupling fines for serious safety violations.

In this case, the two engineers, Yaakov Stern and Ashraf Ali, were caught in departmental audits and have had their filing privileges revoked.

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.

De Blasio opposes worker safety bills

Council Member Jumaane Williams

From NY Times:

...the City Council Committee on Housing and Buildings held a hearing on Thursday to fast-track several bills and to ask questions, some of them pointed, of the city’s buildings commissioner. Several members of the Council also said that they were busy drafting additional bills that would soon be introduced.

“Saving New Yorkers’ lives is the reason that I called this hearing today,” said Councilman Jumaane D. Williams, the committee’s chairman. “To the families of those that we have lost, and to those who have been injured, let me say loudly and clearly: We hear you, and we are here because of you.”

Mr. Williams, a Brooklyn Democrat, then read out loud the names of some of the workers who have died in the last two years, including several whose stories were described in detail in the Times article.

Two of the new bills would double the penalties assessed to contractors for working without a permit and for violating a stop-work order. Another bill would establish a task force of mayoral agencies, to be led by the Department of Buildings, that would convene regularly to assess the safety risks posed to workers, pedestrians and motorists near construction sites.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration opposes the bills, said Rick D. Chandler, the city’s buildings commissioner. “If we set penalties too high, we also risk driving work underground, without the benefit of department regulation, which may in turn result in more unsafe construction,” he told the committee.

Mr. Chandler said that the department was already doing “proactive enhanced disciplinary work” with additional staffing and had established, for the first time, a Risk Management Office that would use data analysis to better identify problems.

He also said the administration would focus more attention on buildings up to nine stories high, “where a disproportionate number of accidents occur.” Mr. Chandler added that the administration was considering requiring that construction superintendents be on site on all midsize alteration projects.

DEPARTMENT OF BUILDINGS CRACKING DOWN ON LICENSES OF REPEAT OFFENDER CONSTRUCTION PROFESSIONALS

First Ever Suspension of Contractor Registration for Multiple Construction Violations

More Discipline Coming for Construction Professionals that Endanger Public

Following his appointment at the Department of Buildings in August of 2014, Commissioner Chandler immediately set out to reform how the agency identifies, coordinates enforcement actions between agencies and disciplines problem construction professionals. Following the creation of a Risk Management Office, the development of a comprehensive construction professional discipline database and the recent release of an Industry Code of Conduct last month, the Department accomplished another priority outlined in its transformative Building One City initiative – the implementation of new proactive regulatory enforcement efforts through the suspension of a contractor’s registration for receiving multiple immediately hazardous violations over a 24 month period. The disciplinary action – part of an overall strategy of imposing greater accountability and integrity within the construction industry – comes following multiple cases in recent months where unscrupulous construction professionals have cut corners during projects to the detriment of workers or public safety.

Following an excavation failure on April 6, 2015 at 19 9th Avenue, the Department of Buildings in coordination with the Department of Investigation began reviewing the violation history of Kenneth Hart of Harco Consultants Corp. The Department conducted an administrative review of the contractor’s work history that resulted in the suspension of Mr. Hart’s General Contractor registrations on July 20, 2015 due to a pattern of risky behavior on his job sites. In addition, all sites using Harco as the contractor were issued stop work orders. The Department of Investigation in coordination with the Manhattan District Attorney launched a criminal investigation which resulted in today’s arrests of those working for Harco, and these individuals will now face charges. The coordination between the three agencies has resulted in administrative disciplinary hearings and criminal indictments that will help to make New York City safer, and the construction industry more accountable for misconduct.

Kenneth Hart was served on July 20, 2015 with a 33 page administrative discipline petition charging that over a 24 month period between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2014 he accrued 30 violations deemed immediately hazardous to the public on 9 jobs sites throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. The charges range from a failure to put in place proper safeguards to protect the public and workers during ongoing construction to cutting corners on jobsites by not following approved work plans.

“It should be made clear with today’s arrests, as well as the suspension of Mr. Hart’s registrations, this Department will not tolerate conduct by construction professionals that puts workers or the public in danger, and will use every enforcement tool provided in the NYC Construction Codes to discipline bad actors,” said Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler. “Targeting and suspending this contractor’s registration due to an extensive violation history is a significant step forward in meeting the Department’s goal to enhance our regulatory efforts over problem construction professionals. The industry should take notice; an attitude that violations are simply the cost of doing business will no longer be tolerated, the Department will be seeking to suspend or revoke licenses for those that repeatedly refuse to abide by the law.”

Under the NYC Administrative Code the Department is granted a wide array of disciplinary enforcement actions for construction professionals who fail to comply with the NYC Construction Code and the various other laws the agency is tasked with enforcing. In addition to the issuance of violations, the Department can place stop work orders on jobs, assess civil penalties, suspend and revoke licenses and where necessary refer cases for criminal enforcement agencies for prosecution.

DOB not tracking repeat offender contractors

From the Daily News:

With construction accidents on the rise, the City Council Monday pressed the Buildings Department to aggressively pursue "bad actor" contractors.

“People who are doing bad things are not being stopped,” Housing & Building Committee Chairman Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn) said. “We want to make sure we’re doing a lot more of connecting the dots.”

From 2013 to last year, the number of building permits rose 10% while the number of accidents jumped by 24%, Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler said at a housing committee hearing.

That’s an 80% rise from the 128 accidents in 2011, and there are indications it may get worse this year.

To date there have been six fatalities, including worker Christian Ginesi falling down an elevator shaft last week. At that pace, the city will exceed 2014's eight fatalities.

At the hearing, Chandler blamed the spike on better reporting and a rising number of big projects: “The larger the project, the more inherent the risk.”

But council members took issue with his agency’s ability to track repeat offender contractors who constantly cut corners and endanger workers.

The city Housing & Preservation Department, for instance, puts contractors with spotty records on an “enhanced review” list to build taxpayer-subsidized affordable units.

Councilmember Helen Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) said she was “surprised” Chandler seemed unaware of that list.

Avella asks DOB commissioner for answers

Original article is here.

(Aren't you folks glad I read more than just the Queens weeklies?)

The DOB Commissioner has a plan

From Crains:

Extended inspection hours and an upgraded electronic-filing system are among the ideas under consideration at the New York City Department of Buildings, Commissioner Rick Chandler said at a Crain's breakfast forum Tuesday at the Yale Club.

The agency's online scheduling portal, dubbed Hub Inspection Ready, is slated to go live early next year. It will allow people to file inspection requests and eventually to view inspection results through the hub. Mr. Chandler acknowledged that gaps in the online system have dampened users' enthusiasm for it since the department rolled it out in 2011 and said the new hub is intended to address those inefficiencies.

The commissioner, who took office July 17, also floated an idea of charging a fee to answer requests about conceptual projects and for the department to conduct inspections after normal business hours on weekdays and even on weekends.

The department currently has 1,100 staffers in the wake of a number of departures that occurred in the gap between the Bloomberg administration leaving office in January and Mayor Bill de Blasio appointing a new buildings commissioner seven months later. The delay was costly. Complaints rose about growing backlogs in the department as a number of key people left the agency, including former Assistant Commissioner James Colgate, who joined law firm Bryan Cave. Staff levels are again rising, however, and are budgeted to hit 1,200 in 2015, in the midst of an ongoing surge in permit applications this year.

"We are very much aware of the backlog issue and of certain staffers who think their job is to stop development, which is not acceptable," Mr. Chandler said.

Another cause of delays in processing permit applications is that many of them land in the department's in-box incomplete. The commissioner called the process by which developers deliberately submit incomplete applications "design by objection," in which proposals are honed over the course of "six, seven or eight" rejections.

"Folks giving us a plan with just a few lines on it goes over the line," Mr. Chandler said. He also proposed charging a fee for owners to consult with the department to see if their ideas are potentially viable, so that they have "some sense of security about whether they can move forward with a project." Such a program "is in the exploratory phase right now," he said. The agency currently performs that service for free.

DeBlasio finally chooses DOB Commissioner

From the Observer:

Mr. de Blasio announced that he was making Hunter College’s assistant vice president of facilities Rick Chandler commissioner of the Buildings Department...

The mayor said that Buildings is badly in need of a change both in its dealings with New Yorkers, and in its office atmosphere.

“We have to change the culture of the Buildings Department. There has to be a totally different sense of time and efficiency,” Mr. de Blasio said, blaming bureaucratic delays and excessive fines on internal attitudes among personnel at the agency.

Mr. Chandler was part of the Buildings Department teams that inspected structures surrounding Ground Zero following 9/11 and damaged buildings after Hurricane Sandy, and said he was up to the task of guiding the agency. He promised to cooperate with the mayor in his ambitious goals of creating and maintaining 200,000 units of affordable housing, and of refitting school buildings to accommodate universal pre-K–as well as helping everyday families with work on their homes and properties.