New York City is cracking down on building safety regulations. The New York Times reports:
On Sunday, the Bloomberg administration said that it would hire 63 more inspectors, bringing the total to 461. The department has already established seven enforcement teams, which can appear on job sites unannounced with the authority to suspend work on the spot.
The excavation team, which was formed nine months ago, has conducted 2,772 inspections on 1,685 sites, forcing half of those with active excavation to stop work at least temporarily.
Conditions at some 300 sites were found to be so egregious that a full engineering audit was ordered. Only two passed, said Timothy D. Lynch, chief engineer of the excavations team.
This crackdown isn’t really surprising to anyone given the recent string of building and construction related accidents in New York City. The move hopefully means that the NYC Buildings department is giving construction accidents their due attention.