Personal Injury Law

NEW YORK CITY SEEKS TOUGHER CONSTRUCTION RULES

According to a press release yesterday by the New York City Department of Buildings, Buildings Commissioner Patricia J. Lancaster announced the launch of Phase II of the Department's Special Enforcement Plan to raise the bar for construction standards citywide to improve compliance with safety regulations and to avoid New York construction accident deaths. The proposed new rules include requiring more special safety managers at more construction sites-especially those involving concrete. Commissioner Lancaster indicated that, ?concrete operations are extremely specialized and require a precise coordination or large numbers of workers.? Safety managers would be required at all buildings at least ten stories high. Present regulations require safety managers for buildings at least fifteen stories high.

According to a recent story in the New York Times, the proposed new rules will further require that general contractors, as well as those contractors working with concrete would have to register with the Buildings Department before obtaining building permits. Registration will enable the Buildings Department to better enforce present building codes and to ensure that safety violations are fined, according to Lancaster. A contractor?s record of compliance with safety and building codes, and whether or not fines have been paid, would be considered by the Department when issuing building permits. The proposed new regulations come shortly after the death of a man who plunged to his death while working on Trump?s SoHo Hotel. Yuriy Vanchytskyy fell to his death January 14, 2008, when wood forms used to hold wet concrete collapsed. According to the New York Department of Buildings? data Vanchytskyy?s death was the third concrete operations-related death since 2006. Further, the Buildings Department reports that sixteen people have been injured in high-rise concrete construction accidents in the last two years. Sixty-one percent of forty one cases where construction materials fell from a high-rise site involved concrete.

Full post as published by New York Injury Talk Blog on February 19, 2008 (boomark / email).