New York Construction Accident & Safety News

The New York Times reports:

Although the department is generally seen as having made strides in battling corruption, construction projects remain fertile ground for bribery. Four contractors were arrested in January on charges that they had offered bribes to an investigator posing as a buildings official.

Mr. D’Alessio said that the excavation team tries to make sure that sites — particularly those with a problematic history — are visited separately by more than one inspector. The team has eight inspectors, seven engineers and two analysts.

Bribery and corruption is antithetical to building and worker safety. Its good to see the city cracking down on bribery, although its unfortunate that at least 4 contractors in a given month tried to bribe an inspector. That averages at 48 per year, which is incredibly scary given that that means the safety of 48 buildings could be compromised multiplied by the thousands that use a building on any given day multiplied by 365 days a year. (The math for building safety is simple: 500 users times 48 abuse incidents times 365 days a year times 25 years equals 219 million.) Scary indeed.

In a surprising turn of events, Edward Marquette was arrested in connection to the New York crane accident that killed seven people. Marquette falsely stated that he investigated the crane that ended up collapsing.

The arrest of the inspector, Edward Marquette, should be setting off alarms for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration. Yet Patricia Lancaster, the city buildings commissioner, appears to be playing down the importance of an inspector who allegedly failed to review the site 11 days before the accident.

Lancaster believes that it simply isn’t likely that the crane failure was the fault of their inspector not inspecting the crane. It seems that her assessment is more blind damage control, which will hardly matter once the lawsuits start to come in.

A probe into scaffolding incidents has prompted action from New York City to start getting tougher on construction workers that use scaffolding. There’s no doubt that this probe with unearth new violations and possibly some cover ups, prompting new legal action.

Deadly falls and dangerous collapses have prompted the Buildings Department to launch a month-long safety probe of 1,500 scaffolds and sidewalk sheds.

“The point of this sweep is to keep workers and the public safe,” Commissioner Patricia Lancaster said. “Our inspectors will have zero tolerance for safety policies that do not meet the building code’s design and construction safety standards.”

The department also will for the first time require builders to register scaffolds less than 40 feet tall, and is working with the Department of Design and Construction to develop safer and better-looking sidewalk sheds.

The probe comes a week after the latest in a series of Daily News editorials demanding such tougher enforcement.

More info at the New York Daily News: Scaffold Probes to Begin