The New York Department of Buildings (NYDOB) has intensified surprise inspections in an initiative to resolve the city’s construction worksite safety challenges, The New York Times reports.
Since Oct. 2018 inspectors have recorded 11,484 violations were issued, with $15 million in fines. Another 2,523 orders were issued to stop work immediately, some because of dangerous working conditions such as missing guardrails and inadequate safety supervision, according to the report.
Inspectors belonging to a SWAT team conducting the unexpected inspections often leave behind “frayed nerves and a stack of violations that can bring hefty fines or even stop the work.”
In total, the team has completed 20,166 surprise inspections of 10,256 construction sites, about one-quarter of all active construction sites citywide since September 2018. The majority of those inspections took place this year, after the unit was fully up and running.
City data indicates construction injuries soared by 61 percent to 761 last year from 472 in 2015. However, construction fatalities remained constant at 12 a year during that same period.
