"City Unveils Plan to Improve Safety at Construction Sites", (c) Charles Bagli,NY Times,

June 5, 2008

Plagued by a rash of fatal construction accidents and widespread concern about public safety, the
Bloomberg administration and the City Council unveiled a 13-point legislative package on
Wednesday to broaden oversight of building sites, increase fines for violations and register all
key contractors.

Companies with troubling safety records could have permits suspended or revoked, stopping
them from doing business if they repeatedly violated the law. The legislation would also give the
citys Buildings Department greater enforcement power, including the ability to assign safety
monitors to sites with a history of hazardous violations.

At a City Hall news conference where he was flanked by construction industry leaders, union
officials and legislators, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said an unacceptably high number of
fatalities demanded an unprecedented level of reform. So far this year, 15 people have died in
construction-related accidents in the city, compared with 12 in all of 2007.

The effort, Mayor Bloomberg said, will help enable the Buildings Department to hold
contractors accountable to their safety records, and introduces new training requirements and
safety rules in key areas, including crane operations. Building for the future and building safely
are not mutually exclusive. We can and will do both. But public safety is our top priority.

Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, who had worked to develop the legislation, said, We will
not compromise on safety, even as construction continued. She said the Council would work
quickly to work out the details and pass the legislation.

Although he described the proposals as badly needed, Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough
president, later said they did not go far enough. He called for an overhaul and expansion of the
Buildings Department.

There arent enough inspectors, Mr. Stringer said. There arent enough trained managers at
the Buildings Department, or a record of being able to do the inspections. If were going to be
able to improve construction safety protocols anytime soon, then the next step is to transform the
Buildings Department.

Mayor Bloomberg said the city planned to add 56 building inspectors in coming months, to bring
the total to 461, up from 277 in January 2002. He said the department had issued more than
1,200 stop-work orders and nearly 4,000 violations in the past 12 months. Still, that has not put
an end to construction accidents, which have become a political embarrassment for the
administration. Buildings Commissioner Patricia J. Lancaster resigned last month, despite her
widely acknowledged role in improving the department.

The mayor and Ms. Quinn are also looking to overturn a section of the City Charter requiring the
building commissioner to be a licensed architect or an engineer. The Building Congress, an
industry group, as well as many architects and engineers, are opposed, saying the commissioner
needs to understand the intricacies of construction. The mayor said that the requirement was
making it hard to find a new commissioner and that the most important requirement was that the
commissioner be a good manager.

The acting commissioner, Robert D. LiMandri, is a trained engineer but does not have a license.

The Bloomberg administration had proposed licensing general contractors, as well as demolition
and concrete subcontractors, a process that would include background checks. The construction
industry resisted that idea, saying it would not improve safety, but could eliminate three or four
of the five concrete suppliers in the city because they might not be able to meet the requirements.

The construction industry was not thrilled with the compromise to register contractors and
require the corporations to identify their principals but accepted it after a crane accident on
Friday in which two workers died at a construction site on East 91st Street. Seven people died in
a crane accident on March 15.

I may not have liked it, but after the second accident, its kind of hard not to accept some of the
proposals that the citys put forth, said Louis J. Coletti, president of the Building Trades
Employers Association. The last couple of months have shown that this process is broken.