New York Construction Accident & Safety News

THe building and construction business is dangerous in New York City–especially given the problems with self-certification. New York Newsday points out:

NEW YORK - More than 8 in 10 building plans vetted by architects and engineers _ instead of city inspectors _ violate zoning rules, city reviews of the plans found.

The Buildings Department recently checked 869 of the “self-certified” plans and issued objections against 727 of them, the New York Post reported Sunday.

Recent accidents have heightened scrutiny of construction practices and criticism of the city’s “self-certification” system for building plans. The system lets architects and engineers confirm on their own that some plans comply with regulations, instead of having department inspectors do it independently.

Self-certification has become common since it was created in 1995 to tackle a backlog of plans awaiting approval. Some 54 percent of the 61,000 plans filed between January and April were self-certified.

This seems like an easy area for abuse and thus a large loophole for accountability, legality, and safety. Given that the Buildings Department of New York City only randomly checks 20% of these, it seems the should either increase the number of random checks or do away with the self-certification system all together.

In what should come as good news for worker safety Newsday points out that:

NEW YORK - Under fire for a spate of construction accidents, the city will spend $5.3 million to hire 63 more safety inspectors, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday.

“The Buildings Department has a critical responsibility to protect the public from construction hazards and to protect the lives and guard the safety of the city’s more than 125,000 construction workers,” Bloomberg said.

“Today, we are furthering this mission by investing resources in making sure that the city’s diverse and talented construction industry takes responsibility for worker and public safety at construction sites throughout the five boroughs from high-rise construction to single-family homes.”

The new hires will bring the total number of buildings inspectors to 461, up from 277 in 2002.

Its great to see Bloomberg, New York City, and the Buildings department get behind a public policy movement like this. It demonstrates that perhaps Bloomberg and the rest of the public servants in New York City really care for the safety of workers and buildings in NYC.

All Headline News reports:

In April stop-work orders on construction sites totaled 1,403, almost twice as much as the 785 issued in January. Site managers and construction workers told Crain’s New York Business, an industry magazine, overzealousness on the part of city building officials, which was an offshoot of the crane accident, has caused the rise in construction site closures even for minor paperwork technicalities.

Whether this actually increases worker safety in New York City remains to be seen. Hopefully this will create an increasing urgency to maintain genuine safety on building sites in the Big Apple.

Construction accident fears are fueling a safety crackdown. Stephanie Gaskell of The New York Daily News reports:

Minor violations are shutting down construction sites and costing contractors millions of dollars as the Buildings Department cracks down on inspections in the wake of the deadly East Side crane collapse, a new report has found.

A top industry group says the city is paralyzed by fear after eight people were killed when a massive crane fell in Turtle Bay on March 15, according to Crain’s New York Business.

“These inspectors are all afraid of losing their jobs,” Louis Coletti of the Building Trades Employers’ Association told Crain’s.

In April, there were 1,403 stop-work orders on construction sites in the city - nearly double the 785 issued in January. Construction workers and site managers told the mag they were shut down for minor paperwork technicalities.

Hopefully the crackdown will go a long way toward making New York City a safer one for construction workers and citizens alike. At a minimum, we all should expect it.

This is clearly a pressing question for someone involved in a construction or workplace accident. Answering it is critical to determining legal justice and receiving just compensation for damages in accident cases. Findlaw suggests:

Who May Be Liable For A Construction Site Injury?

Depending on the size and sophistication of the construction project, there can be a wide variety of individuals involved at a construction site, including the site’s landowner, design and engineering professionals, contractors (including general, “prime,” and “sub”-contractors), construction managers, and equipment and material suppliers. While many construction projects are based on general contract relationships (where a general contractor retained by the site owner enters into agreements with sub-contractors as needs require), larger projects are increasingly being handled by “construction management” organizations.

In order to determine exactly who is liable and who you should pursue action against, its best to seek the best in legal representation.

The New York Times points out:

At least four people were killed and more than a dozen others were injured, and damage was expected to run into the millions of dollars in what the authorities called one of the city’s worst accidents — a calamity that turned a neighborhood near the United Nations into a zone of panic, pulverized buildings, wailing sirens, evacuations, searches in the rubble and covered bodies in the streets.

Many residents of the neighborhood around the site of the collapse — 51st Street between Second and First Avenues — said they had been worried for months about the possibility of a collapse, calling the crane, looming higher each week, a menace, particularly because so many residential buildings were being put up in the area with remarkable speed: several floors a week at times.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

NEW YORK — The city’s buildings commissioner resigned Tuesday from an agency that has attracted critical comments, some of them from New York’s mayor, for a rising number of fatal construction accidents.

Patricia Lancaster, an architect who overhauled the city’s 40-year-old building code and introduced several new rules to manage building safety, quit after six years on the job. Thirteen people have died in construction accidents in New York this year.

The New York Times details both sides of the Building Chief story:

“She did a terrific job in getting the department back on track,” the developer Douglas Durst said.

Ms. Lancaster also had her share of critics, who said her department had been too easy on developers even as they flouted building regulations and safety standards. But even some of those critics said Ms. Lancaster could not be blamed for all her agency’s shortcomings.

“Clearly, our city has been facing a crisis of confidence around construction safety,” said Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, “but the problem before us is not the making of a single person.”

Christoper Faherty of the New York Sun:

“This is the third fatal construction accident this year within one mile on the East Side of Manhattan,” a City Council member who represents parts of the Upper East Side, Jessica Lappin, said. “The real question here is whether the buildings department is doing its job.”

The article continues:

“A tragedy happened here today,” the commissioner of the department, Patricia Lancaster, said in a statement. “We will pursue the toughest enforcement to the full extent of the law. Development cannot be at the expense of the workers building our City.”

The developer of the condominium, Alexico Group, released a statement following the accident, sending its deepest sympathies to Kelly’s family and showing support for the construction company, Hunter Roberts Construction Group.

“Construction safety is our utmost concern and we believe that the construction manager, Hunter Roberts, has a good safety record. We will cooperate fully with the City’s investigation of this tragic event,” the statement said.

The New York Daily News reports:

The site has 38 open Buildings Department violations, 25 since construction began in April 2007, records show. They include such high-severity problems as failure to safeguard the public and property, lack of a site safety manager, no safety nets and lack of fire-safety standpipes, records show.

A site inspection - triggered by the March 15 crane collapse at East 51st St. that killed seven people - found there was no plumb and torque inspection report to ensure the crane there had been properly installed.

The condo, the Laurel, is next to Public School 168 on 67th St. between First and York Aves. Children were playing in the schoolyard when Kelly fell.

The tragedy comes amid a 12% jump in high-rise development and an 83% spike in construction accidents.

“You had a site known to be dangerous,” said Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, whose district includes the site of yesterday’s tragedy and the E. 51st St. disaster. “How do you allow business to carry on as usual?”

The city and the feds are investigating the accident.

The New York Times suggests the grave nature of this accidental tragedy and the wide scope of the legal ramifications:

“We will be holding the individuals responsible for this terrible tragedy accountable,” Ms. Lancaster said during a visit to the site. “Construction companies, owners, architects and engineers have to obey the law.”

Construction in New York has been proceeding rapidly recently, and there has been a string of fatal accidents. Ten people have been killed in high-rise construction accidents since January, including seven who died on March 8 when a 200-foot crane collapsed at another East Side condominium project, demolishing a four-story town house on East 50th Street.
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For more info on the accident click here.