NYC DOB issues 1,499 stop work orders in construction safety enforcement sweep

The New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) reports that it issued 1,499 stop work orders during a three month “Zero Tolerance” construction safety campaign between June and August.

DOB reports that since the campaign launched on June 1, inspectors checked out approximately 7,500 construction sites in all five boroughs and issued more than 3,600 violations to contractors and site safety professionals for their failure to keep their work sites safe.

There have been seven building construction-related fatalities in New York City in 2021, all occurring in the first five months of the year.

“DOB enforcement is of critical importance in promoting safety at construction sites; but the reality is that we cannot be in all places at all times,” Buildings Commissioner Melanie E. La Rocca said in a statement earlier in the month. “To protect the lives of the working men and women who are building in our city, we need our partners in the construction industry to step up and join us in pushing for enhanced round-the-clock supervision and greater accountability.”

DOB says that the construction work site inspections conducted during this three-month campaign, were in addition to the hundreds of thousands of regular development and enforcement inspections performed by DOB inspectors throughout the city year-round.

“DOB will be following up on our “Zero Tolerance” construction safety campaign with a return to our routine unannounced site safety inspections of NYC’s larger construction work sites, continued interventions at specific sites identified during the campaign that were found to have egregious site safety violations, and a renewed push to enact proposed construction safety legislation,” the DOB statement says.

Earlier this year, DOB announced that five new construction safety bills were introduced for consideration in the New York City Council. If adopted, these consequential bills would greatly enhance oversight and accountability on construction sites in our city, building upon important work the department has undertaken in recent years to drive down work site fatalities and injuries. The proposed bills would create a licensing requirement for general contractors who perform construction work, require more site safety supervision at larger work sites, strengthen requirements for cold-formed steel construction, and permanently ban the dangerous use of stand-off brackets for suspended scaffold work.

Results of Construction Safety Sweep by borough:

Results of Construction Safety Sweep by Work Site Type: