Committee on Housing and Buildings

Good morning and welcome to New York City Council hearing on Community and Housing and Building. At this time, we are asking everyone to silence all electronic devices, and at no point in time in this hearing anyone should approach the dais. If you wish to testify in today's hearing and haven't filled out a appearance card, please do so.

We'll start at the back. Chair, you may begin.

Thank you, Sergeant, and good morning. I'm Councilmember Pierina Sanchez, chair of the Committee on Housing and Buildings. On behalf of the committee and the New York City Council, I'd like to welcome all the members of the public and the administration who have joined us this morning. Uh, before I begin, I just want to acknowledge that we are joined by Councilmembers Maloney and Riley.

New York City is home to more than 1 million buildings and 40,000 active construction sites. At any moment. The chief agency overseeing this work and the city's construction industry is the Department of Buildings. The Department of Buildings plays a critical role in enforcing the rules and regulations that keep the tenants, small businesses, and workers across those 1 million buildings safe.

When a new building is constructed or an existing building undergoes renovation work, the public should have confidence that this work is being conducted with the utmost integrity. And that the working conditions on construction sites are safe for every person involved. Importantly, we have some of the most rigorous construction safety standards in the world, and they are up to date.

The construction codes we have in effect are just from 2022. But our standards only protect the public when the enforcement agency is staffed, resourced, and able to ensure that developers, contractors, and professionals are following the rules. So today we'll take a closer look at DOB's ongoing efforts to advance construction safety. We've seen recent encouraging trends in the data.

In fiscal year 2026, the mayor's management reports noted a 45% decrease in serious or fatal construction injuries, which is down from 557 to 308. Of those serious injuries, Falls remain the leading cause over the past 2 years. And while the overall decline signifies— can signify real progress, more can be done to identify the persistent causes of both serious injuries and deaths on construction sites.

Deaths which consistently hover around 8 per year. And I have to add that while these numbers seem positive, the trends have also zigzagged up and down since 2022 during my tenure as Housing Chair, and my usual optimism has a little pause. In the same way that New York City seeks to prevent all traffic fatalities through the Vision Zero initiative, we should use a similar data-driven approach to eliminate construction-related deaths entirely.

Recent high-profile incidents also highlight the need for continued evaluation of our city's construction safety standards. The buckling of 2 load-bearing columns in the 21st floor of the former Pfizer headquarters in Midtown raised significant concerns about whether corners were cut, which unsafe conditions were first identified, what scope of work was approved, how the city can ensure this never happens again.

I'm thankful for DOB's swift response to ensure the safety of all of the New Yorkers in the surrounding area, but the incident was serious enough to prompt a citywide enforcement blitz from the department the results of which we will also be wanting to discuss during today's hearing. On a related note, we will also receive an implementation update for legislation that we championed here in this committee, Local Law 79 of 2024, which created a new requirement for proactive enforcement at Department of Buildings.

Additionally, a recent indictment from the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office raises concerns about the oversight of safety site safety training credentials. Last month, the Brooklyn DA charged 2 individuals and the related company, Red Coat Inc., for creating and selling fraudulent site safety cards to construction workers. Although the company was authorized to provide site safety trainings, the DA alleged that they sold cards to construction workers who never completed that training.

We must ensure that all workers are appropriately trained and continue to improve the city's tools for overseeing the companies that fake safety credentials. Excuse me. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't end with my continued concerns around staffing within the agency. In my time as chair of the Committee on Housing and Buildings, I have repeatedly raised concerns about DOB staffing.

Under the prior administration, DOB eliminated roughly a quarter of its budgeted workforce, including positions tied to inspections and safety oversight. And while the council has fought year over year to recover positions, even in the most recent fiscal year, DOB's enforcement division saw a reduction of 16 positions, including 7 inspectorial titles. So I will continue to push for inspectorial and safety agency— excuse me, and safety capacity that the agency needs.

I look forward to hearing more about the administration's approach to construction safety, implementation of recent council legislation, and further opportunities to collaborate toward our shared goal of keeping New Yorkers safe. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my team, Deputy Chiefs of Staff Ben Ratner and Kim Castellanos, our District Director Maria Jose Mares, Gerard Fernandez, Soraya Bonilla, Oriana Roa Acevedo, Malia Sardinha— welcome to our new fellow— and Marcus Connor, intern.

I'd also like to thank the Housing and Buildings Committee staff, Senior Legislative Counsel Austin Malone, Legislative Counsel Billy Eck, Senior— not sillier— Senior Policy Analyst Jose Conde, Senior Policy Analyst Derek Spencer, Data Scientists Mohamed Shadid and Noah Slossberg, and Finance Analyst Karla Naranjo and Spencer Kuhn. And with that, thank you all for being here today.

I'm going to turn it over to our counsel to administer the oath. Please raise your right hand. Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and to answer all councilmember questions honestly? I do. Thank you. You may begin when ready. Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Sanchez and members of the Committee on Housing and Buildings. I am Amit Thigani, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Buildings. I am joined today by Egal Shamash, First Deputy Commissioner, Guillermo Patino, Deputy Commissioner of Policy and Legal Affairs, and several members of the department's leadership team. Thank you for holding this hearing on the critical issue of construction safety.

We look forward to discussing the department's efforts to keep New Yorkers safe. Across New York City's landscape of nearly 1.1 million buildings and 40,000 active construction sites, approximately 1,700 dedicated department employees work every day to support the city's growth and safety. I just want to emphasize I mentioned the full number because in addition to our inspectors, it also includes the administrative and clerical staff, the attorneys.

It is a full whole cycle of work that happens in order to make this process work effectively. As residential and commercial buildings are constructed or altered, safety is the thread connecting all of our efforts. It shapes how our code development team collaborates with industry to update and refine the construction codes, how our plan examiners evaluate building plans, and how our inspectors assess both active construction sites and existing buildings.

The regulations we enforce further the agency's mission of ensuring the safe and lawful use of buildings and construction sites across the 5 boroughs. This work ultimately protects all New Yorkers and those who visit and work in our great city, including the construction workers who help build it. and maintain it. Today, I'm going to address the following broad topics: the department's construction safety-related regulatory framework, training requirements, education and outreach, enforcement, and technology and innovation.

The department's regulatory framework relies on the requirements in our codes, particularly Chapter 33 of the New York City Building Code and related department rules. Chapter 33 sets the city's core safety requirements for construction and demolition work, Focusing on protecting the public, workers, and neighboring properties. It mandates safe job site conditions, site safety plans for larger projects, stringent requirements for the use of cranes and heavy equipment, procedures for controlled demolition work, and protecting and monitoring of adjacent buildings.

Chapter 33 not only sets requirements for how construction and demolition work is carried out, it The new regulation also establishes requirements for site safety professionals at larger jobs. For example, it requires a licensed construction superintendent to oversee certain construction and demolition projects, including the construction of new buildings, the full demolition of existing buildings, and large alterations to existing buildings.

DOB, through rulemaking, has specified the tasks a construction superintendent is expected to perform in fulfilling their code obligations of maintaining a safe site, including a daily inspection of the job site, ensuring compliance with Chapter 33 and with approved construction documents. Additionally, pursuant to Local Law 149 of 2021, DOB has put restrictions on the number of job sites a construction superintendent can be responsible for and will begin to enforce a strict one-job limit and mandatory onsite presence starting early next year.

When DOB makes changes to the codes or our processes, such as changes to the superintendent requirements, it's important to make sure that the industry, building owners, and the public are provided notice. To that end, DOB uses service notices, construction advisories, building bulletins, and our My Building newsletter, which I'm going to pitch. If you haven't signed up for the My Building newsletter, please go online, add your email.

We use these tools to keep the construction industry and public informed, to provide more detailed guidance, to clarify regulatory requirements, and alert the industry and the public to emerging safety issues and regulatory changes. The department also uses its social media platforms and holds quarterly meetings with various segments of the construction industry, and even monthly meetings in our borough office where such issues are discussed.

Ultimately, these proactive outreach efforts ensure that our industry partners, building owners, and the public are well informed and can prepare for changes that will impact them.

The department is always looking for ways to modernize and facilitate safer construction in the city. I am proud to say that in partnership with the mayor's office, we are convening the mayor's committee on construction safety. One of the key recommendations and actions in the housing plan as part of a broader effort to address injuries and fatalities across New York City's construction industry.

Invitations to the first committee meeting were sent out this week, and the committee is expected to convene in November. This effort will bring together labor representatives, workers, industry experts, and senior city officials to examine systematic safety challenges and recommend reforms, which may include legislative reforms that we would work on with the council. Thank you. The committee's mandate includes identifying the root causes of persistent construction injuries and fatalities, evaluating current enforcement tools, and identifying gaps in accountability, particularly where contractors repeatedly violate safety standards.

The committee will also assess how emerging technologies can help reduce hazardous tasks and protect workers in extreme weather conditions. weather conditions, which was the focus of the mayor's Executive Order 17 issued earlier this year. Through this work, the committee aims to strengthen safety practices while supporting the city's ongoing housing and broader development goals. Chair Sanchez, we look forward to your participation on the committee.

Pointing to Ben, that's awesome. To further support housing and development, the department recently launched a related effort. the Affordable and Efficient Construction Reform Task Force. The ACER Task Force is an initiative aimed at streamlining the development process in New York City and a major component of the administration's block-by-block housing plan. The department is working with industry and agency partners to evaluate multiple facets of the agency's regulatory framework to identify areas for improvement to speed up construction, to make it less expensive to build in the city but not compromise safety.

The goal is to develop recommendations for operational changes and modifications to the city's construction codes, a process that's working in parallel to the important work of our code committee process.

As we shared during the recent hearing on the mayor's housing plan, construction sites are safer than they have been in previous years. Proactive and complaint based inspections, industry outreach and engagement, and mandatory site safety training for workers have contributed to this progress. We believe that training is a key component that directly correlates to the downward trend in construction-related injuries and fatalities.

Since calendar year 2023, the number of construction-related injuries on job sites have steadily decreased. In, in, in calendar year '23, there were 692 reported injuries compared to 482 in calendar year 2024, a 30% decrease. In calendar year 2025, there were 320 reported injuries, marking a 34% decrease from the year before. And as of September, there has been 266 reported injuries thus far for calendar year 2026.

Meanwhile, there were 7 construction-related fatalities in calendar year 2023 and calendar year 2024, 10 in— sorry, there were 7 construction-related fatalities in calendar year 2023, 10 in calendar year 2025, and 4 so far in 2026. I want to underscore this. There is no such thing as an acceptable injury or a fatality on the construction site. We believe with training, education, outreach, those incidents are preventable, and we have to work harder to make it so.

What our data shows is that worker falls are the leading cause of construction-related injuries and fatalities, which makes fall prevention a focus for the department, and that is reflected in the SST training curriculum. Both the mandated SST training and refresher courses cover fall prevention prevention, and a number of other topics. Further, the City Council, the industry, and DOB collaborated on Local Law 10 of 2026, passed at the end of last year and effective in January of this year, which updated the SST curriculum to include a new mental health module that addresses suicide prevention, substance misuse risks, and the everyday stresses of construction work.

This reflects a shift in how New York City thinks about construction safety. Moving beyond hard hat hazards to the well-being of workers themselves. This marks a deliberate evolution of the SST program by acknowledging the human realities of the workforce that builds our city. To date, DOB-approved course providers have issued over 396,000 active site safety training cards, nearly 74,000 active Supervisor cards and approximately 114,000 active worker wallet cards.

DOB continues to conduct outreach regarding, regarding the site safety requirements, including through its annual Construction Safety Week event in May, publishing an annual construction safety report, and conducting targeted outreach when we identify troubling trends. We take site safety training seriously. We have taken strong enforcement action against course providers who put the public at risk. Just last month, DOB coordinated with the Department of Investigations and the Brooklyn District Attorney to investigate Red Code Inc., leading to an indictment of the company and its principals for selling fraudulent OSHA and site safety training cards to workers who never received the required training.

Immediately following the indictment, we revoked their status as a DOB-approved course provider and developed a plan to invalidate all 2,000 active SST cards the company has issued, citing the danger of allowing untrained workers onto job sites and the need to preserve the integrity of the city's construction safety training program. Simultaneously, the Department of Small Business Services launched a remediation program urging affected workers to contact the agency and provided free, legitimate replacement SST training through SBS-authorized providers so workers could come into compliance and continue to work safely on construction sites.

These enforcement actions underscore DOB's core responsibility to protect the public by ensuring that every worker on a construction site holds a legitimate, verifiable SST card supported by actual training. Not fraudulent credentials that undermine safety.

As the city council is aware, the establishment of regulatory requirements and modifications to the applicable codes is only one part of DOB's work. Ensuring compliance with those requirements is another, and includes enforcement of technical and safety standards. DOB may receive complaints of potential violating conditions from a number of sources, including 311, a referral from another city agency such as.

HPD or FDNY or OEM, or a notification from the industry in connection with an incident. After notification of an incident or potentially violating condition, DOB inspectors will be dispatched to the building or construction site to inspect. Where a violating condition is found, appropriate action is taken, which may include issuance of an OAT summons, a stop work order, or a vacate order, depending upon the nature of the violating condition.

In the case of immediately hazardous violations, Class 1, when the owner has failed to certify the correction of violating conditions, the department will reinspect until all violating conditions are corrected. When appropriate, the department utilizes enhanced enforcement tools such as issuing criminal court summons— summonses or initiating affirmative litigation which requires coordination with the New York City Law Department.

Enforcement actions could also include disciplinary actions against a licensed or design— a licensed design professional. Our response to an incident at 57 East Burnside Avenue in the Bronx is an example of where the department took swift enforcement action in partnership with the Chair's Office. On January 12th, 2026, Construction crews employed by a general contractor were performing demolition operations at a large single-story building.

While work was ongoing, a building wall along Walton Avenue experienced an uncontrolled collapse, spilling out onto an adjacent sidewalk shed, sending debris approximately 15 feet onto the roadway. Fortunately, no one was hurt because of the collapse, which would have resulted in a serious DoB's investigation into this incident determined that the contractor ignored a previously issued full stop work order for the site, which legally prevented demolition from proceeding.

Additionally, the contractor was performing the demolition out of sequence and contrary to the approved engineering plans and was illegally using an excavator to clean up the demolition work. DoB took immediate action to suspend the registration of the contractor and issued violations to his employer. We are using every tool in our enforcement toolbox to hold bad actors accountable and look forward to working with the City Council to expand our enforcement tools.

Since the City Council passed Local Law 79 of 2024 requiring DOB to create a proactive inspection program, the department has shifted from a primarily complaint-based approach to a more proactive one, which strengthens the public safety as it enables us to intervene before major issues arise. Through the program, DOB uses predictive analytics to focus its resources on the city's most at-risk buildings and on bad actors.

In calendar year 2024, the department conducted 127,535 reactive inspections and 49,431 proactive inspections. Thank you. With proactive inspections accounting for 28% of the total. In calendar year 2025— I meant to say calendar year 2024 before. In calendar year 2025, DOB conducted 129,058 reactive inspections and 57,673 proactive inspections, increasing the proactive enforcement share to 31%. For calendar year 2026, As of September, the department has conducted 109,793 reactive inspections and 54,226 proactive inspections, further increasing the proactive share to 33%.

The proactive inspections program is comprised of a team of 59 DOB personnel, which includes inspectorial and administrative staff. However, the work of the proactive inspections team and our inspectorial staff in general a downstream impact on the other areas of the agency when violations are issued. The results— that results in increased workload for other units such as attorneys who represent the department at oath and the administrative and clerical staff who review and process certificates of correction.

Lastly, I'd like to touch upon technology and innovation and what DOB is doing in that space to improve operations, efficiency, and safety. Expanding the city's available housing supply remains a priority for this administration. Further, the department's work as it relates to commercial development directly impacts the creation of jobs and the industries that provide essential services to New Yorkers.

Therefore, it is paramount that we have the technological capacity to support and keep pace with development in the city. That includes implementing enhancements to the available modules and functionality in DOBnow, as well as exploring ways technology could facilitate faster building inspections, such as with the use of drones. We are continuing our work with the Buildings Tech Lab, a public-private initiative with the Partnership Fund for the City— for New York City.

The Buildings Tech Lab connects technology companies with DOB subject matter experts with the goal of identifying, developing, and testing technologies to streamline our processes and improve operations. Through the Building Tech Lab, DOB is utilizing software to more efficiently route inspectors. That means we are able to respond to a larger number of sites, and that happens in a shorter timeframe overall.

More efficient routing coupled with our high inspectorial staffing level of 609 active inspectors, 14 in the pipeline, and the vacancy rate of 8% overall. Results in increased productivity and potentially increased safety. This fall, the OB plans to engage formally with 2 firms, Ptolemy and Gripes, to develop the test software to help our enforcement team promote safety on construction sites and in existing buildings.

Ptolemy will focus on using predictive analytics to identify violation-prone actors in the construction and real estate industries. and support our enforcement investigations with a particular focus on cases of tenant harassment. Gripes will help bring all agency data into one dashboard to streamline our enforcement operations. Next year, we plan to engage several more firms through the Tech Lab to support other aspects of our enforcement mission.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide a lot of testimony before you today. We welcome any questions you may have. And now I'll take a breath.

All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Commissioner. I'm a fan of the long testimony. I'm sorry, public, if you're not. I'd like to also acknowledge that we're joined by Councilmember Susan Chuang and Councilmember Feliz. Oh, you snuck in. Okay. Good to see you, councilmembers. Okay. So I will be signing up for the My Buildings newsletter. And my first question, I just want to start with a clarification question here.

So you— thank you for the breakdown between the number of inspections that have been happening reactively versus proactively. I don't know if you saw my cheer at the increasing percentage that is proactive, although you did say that it causes a lot more work. That's okay. We can talk about that. Where's my question number 0? So my question number 0 is, we— I just want to make sure we're talking about the same numbers.

So for calendar year 2026, for instance, you cite 109,793 reactive inspections, 54,226 proactive inspections, you know, for a total of, call it, 160-odd But we are looking at numbers more at the scale of 400,000 inspections annually happening. So for instance, in our report, we say that fiscal year 2026, DOB completed 415,481 inspections. This is being pulled from the MMR.

Can you just help us understand the difference there, 160,000 versus 415,000? The total number of inspections includes all the development inspections that we do on the closeout of jobs, signing off plumbing and electrical applications, and not just the enforcement inspections that we're talking about with the proactive and reactive numbers that the commissioner mentioned. Okay, excellent. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Deputy Commissioner. And then, so focusing in on the enforcement inspections that we're talking about here, roughly 160,000 Can you help us understand, of the 1,700 headcount, how many— and we have roughly 338 construction inspectors— is that the number of inspectors that is effectuating these 160,000 inspections? Those numbers are for both development and enforcement inspections.

Those are total number of inspectors that the department has. Okay. So then how many inspectors are being dedicated to enforcement? Inspections. It's 4:30. So it's 430 for construction inspections and overall— Is your mic on? Yeah. Okay. 430— sorry, I'm not on the mic. 430 for construction inspections. The overall inspection universe is 609. And we can break it down even further for units.

We can follow up with a breakdown. for units, but I will also point out that development inspections has a role in construction safety. And so before we allow a project to have any sign-offs or move to get their TCO or CO, those inspectors are making sure that the connections are there properly, the work's been done according to plan.

So for us, we see it as a larger holistic whole. Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. So is it true to say that of the inspectors carrying out proactive and reactive inspections, but the enforcement inspections, so if there's roughly 160,000 inspections happening of these a year and roughly 430 inspectors within the unit that is doing these enforcement inspections, then they're roughly doing 1 to 2 a day, each inspector?

The number— the average number of inspections varies roughly between 5 and 7 inspections a day. What needs to take into account is vacation, court for all the oath summonses that are issued, and training. The only thing I would add Life for a development inspection versus a construction inspection could be varied. So a development inspection on a large project, that person may have 1 or 2, depending on the size of what they're doing.

For construction safety, if someone is looking at a full stop work order on a large site, that takes more time. This is part of what the routing technology that we're looking at will help us basically pull in the input from what they're doing that day to get better analysis of how long it'll take them so we can route them more efficiently.

Got it. Thank you. I can't get to 6 places in 1 day almost ever, so that's very, very impressive.

And just another question to make sure we're on the same page. If you have this information, because I don't think we send this to you in advance, One of the complaints I get on a local level is, you know, the types of complaints I get on a local level because the kind of district that I represent is about smaller buildings, right?

Those that don't meet the threshold, say, for requiring site safety training cards and supervisors and assistants and coordinators and all of that. So can you help us understand using the— Whether it's the 415,000 overall inspections per year or the 160,000 or so enforcement inspections, can you help us understand the breakdown of how many of these inspections are happening at small sites, you know, 1, 2-story buildings, those that don't meet the threshold for SST versus at larger sites?

I'm not sure if we have those numbers. Exactly. I will say that of our teams on the reactive side, the borough enforcement team, each borough has an enforcement team that's managed through a central leadership team. They are out there doing reactive responsive enforcement in addition to, you know, real-time enforcement that works in the evenings or emergency response team that goes out in the evenings and weekends.

So we can come back with those numbers, but we have additional units even beside the borough enforcement team. We also have, as a complement on the proactive inspection team, our Staying Vigilant program, which focuses on particularly violations we find and going back and looking at our analytics for where we see hotspots or bad actors. And just to I'll add in, a construction super is required on all new buildings, so that irrespective of the size of the building.

In our building code, we have a definition for a major building, 7 stories and up, that is only for site safety managers and coordinators. Construction supers are still required on all new buildings. Existing buildings that have a vertical or horizontal enlargement, a full demo, an alteration that is within a building, more than 50% of the floors of the building, if you're removing a floor of a building, or if you're doing any kind of underpinning or SOE work, supportive excavation work, that those construction sites still require a construction super.

That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Deputy Commissioner. Okay.

So I'm going to start with a question and then I'm going to turn to my colleagues. I'd like to acknowledge we've also been joined by Councilmember Joseph. Thank you for being here. So moving to my question number 1— that was question number 0, this is question number 1. In July 2026, an office-to-residential conversion project at the former Pfizer headquarters in Midtown partially collapsed.

In response, DOB conducted an enforcement sweep inspecting over 180 construction projects. What were the results of DOB's enforcement sweeps? Were these inspections conducted at construction sites throughout the city, or targeted at specific areas? How did DOB identify sites? How many violations were issued? Did DOB identify construction sites with similar issues at the location of the collapse? And how many office-to-residential conversions are under construction today?

We'll go from there. So the particular incident at the Pfizer location in Midtown, there were a number of different enforcement actions that were taken. day of and the days that followed, but in particular we did deploy an enforcement sweep as related to this. This is actually a tool that we have used and we continue to use as a complement to our investigation of a range of different issues.

In this situation, we looked at entities that were associated with the work being done at this construction site. We did an inspection, as you said, of 180 construction sites. We issued, as a result of those inspections, 71 ECB and OAT violations, and we issued 19 stop work orders in total. The violations, thankfully, were not representative of structural concerns that posed imminent danger to the public, but nonetheless, we were able to make sure we communicated to those sites that we needed safer action taken.

And we continue to follow up on what transpired through that sweep. Great. Thank you, Commissioner. And how many construction— excuse me, how many office-to-residential conversions are under construction today? We're going to look for that number and come back to you. I mean, so we have it here. Sorry. So year to date 2026, there are 90 buildings permitted totaling about 11,207 dwellings.

That's nearly— that's actually nearly triple the amount during the same period last year, which was 37 buildings, 4,814 dwellings. Sorry, what's the current number? It is 90 buildings permitted totaling Totaling 11,207 dwelling units. And that's up from 37 buildings last year and how many units? That's right. And 4,814. So this is cumulative, 90 this year, additional to 37 last year?

Yes. It's cumulative. All right. Our bills do things. Okay. Great. Thank you. Does DOB plan to implement additional structural review requirements for conversions that add floors? So there, you know, the investigation continues. We're continuing to look at both what's happening here, but we're looking at data related to other construction sites, enlargements. Again, I think we're looking at this since we don't see this as an issue related to office residential conversion, but a construction site issue that we need to examine more deeply.

All recommendations will be on the table. Additionally, as part of the review, we've asked the additional engineers that have been brought in, and in this case it was Thornton Tomasetti, to do— in their review, provide us recommendations about where things could be stronger and made— made more concise or more efficient. So we'll be looking ourselves, we'll be asking for feedback from the additional engineers brought onto this project to look and review what happened, and we'll be making recommendations after we review that.

Thank you, Commissioner. I want to acknowledge that we are joined by Councilmember Salaam. So you said the investigation is ongoing. Is there anything you can tell us about precisely what happened at Pfizer, what any Anything with respect to what went wrong? There have been claims that there wasn't insufficient shoring, that that's not what caused the buckling of the columns.

Is there anything that you can share with us? Unfortunately, it would be inappropriate to talk about items in the middle of an investigation that we're working on with other law enforcement partners, and so we'll need to wait till that investigation is concluded. Thank you. I'm going to ask one more question, and then I'll turn it over to Councilmember Juang for her questions.

And any other colleagues before I continue. Okay.

So for— with respect to Local Law 79 of 2024, thank you for the updates within your testimony regarding the implementation of the proactive inspection program where DOB utilizes predictive analytics to identify potentially problematic buildings, such as buildings with unlicensed or unpermitted work. maintenance issues or structural issues. Can you tell us, in addition to the number of proactive inspections that you have been able to do in fiscal '26, '25, and '24, can you tell us the number of violations that— and stop-work orders that have been issued as a result?

And is the rate of stop-work orders issued and the rate of violations found in proactive inspections different from the rate that is found in reactive inspections or otherwise? Well, let me start with the numbers you requested. So there have been— so just more generally pulling back, between January 2025 and 2026, the proactive enforcement initiative has produced 19,847 total inspections at 13,092 unique locations.

There have been 14,161 violations issued during the proactive enforcement initiative. So, you know, I can ask our First Deputy to speak to the inferences and findings on the differences between both, but I'll just defer to her. Thank you, Commissioner. I want to highlight that these are very specific inspections that are being done by that team, right? So this is a subset of the total number of inspections and the total number of violations issued by the department as a whole.

The violations— I'm sorry, the inspections that are done by this team are completely proactive, so 100% proactive as compared to— the 33% that we were quoting before. What we are finding with our proactive inspection team, and that's a team that goes out and looks at potentially buildings adjacent to construction sites, we are finding that in review of the drawings for those construction sites and the inspections of the buildings next next door, we're identifying high-risk buildings and ensuring that the construction site next door is not impacting those high-risk adjacent buildings.

With our heightened enforcement team, that team is specifically looking at owners, licensees, registered design professionals, and licensees could include electricians, plumbers, construction supers, site safety managers, runs the whole gamut of our licensees. And they're specifically looking at those entities and potentially who those entities are also working with and inspecting that spider web that those connections make. And looking at all those buildings that those entities are involved with.

So the proactive inspection team is definitely finding a higher rate of violations based on that. Again, the proactive inspection team is putting together a lot of good work using predictive analytics. But all of that trickles down to heightened enforcement. And when I say heightened enforcement, And that is sharing the results of all the sweeps that we do with our attorneys at the Department of Buildings, whether that is our licensing disciplinary unit or our borough enforcement team.

Those teams are processing criminal court nuisance abatement cases against owners, against licensees. So that is the full circle of the work that the proactive enforcement team is doing. I would say that the main thing here is when we are doing complaint-driven responses, we are normally maybe working with one site, individual small lot, a large complex series of lots together.

What we see here in proactive is that we may be dealing with multi-building, multi-jurisdictional issues. We've recently met with most of the DA offices about the work that we need to collaborate on and do further, and finding that there is a synergy between the proactive work that we're doing, potentially exploring further areas like false filings, and bringing these cases with their worker protection or their construction safety units.

And now proactive Enforcement, the work that we work with the council, it gives us tools to come to the DAs with information, come to the Tenant Harassment Task Force with information that we didn't have before. Excellent, excellent. Thank you. It's, it's really heartening to hear that it is making a difference. 1,400 violations issued means that there were 1,400 problems out there, and then it's really helpful to hear that it's leading to— 14,000.

14,000. Holy moly. All right. That's even more impressive. No, that's really heartening. And, you know, that was an effort— that local law was an effort that we really worked on together, the agency and the council. And so just, you know, invite us to continue to do just that in the task forces that we're going to be working on together.

So thank you. 14,000 at 30%. 13,000 unique sites. Large numbers. Wow. Thank you. Thank you for the work to all of the members working at DOB.

So next I'm going to call up Councilmember Juang, followed by Joseph, and then I will see if any other colleagues have questions, and then I'll come back for round 2. Thank you, Chair. And also I want to thank Commissioner, working very hard, give us a very long testimony. And also, I have some questions. How are DOB and the DEP safety requirements enforced?

So, in— at different steps in the process, there may be DEP reviews, checkbox items in the approval of plans or permitting process, most commonly known as the ones referred to as asbestos. And so those are items that we need to get verification that those applications are submitted, are reviewed both by their staff and our staff before an application is allowed to move forward toward approval or permitting.

Who are responsible to check whether or not safe protocols are followed? Like in my district, we have 2501 86th Street. We have been raised a question about asbestos. for like a couple years. And then finally we got a stop order because we know the building was from 1990, before 1990, definitely has asbestos there. And then there's a fraudulent report was submitted.

And then finally after months community calling, pushing, for investigation. Finally, in April, you guys did the investigation saying that there's asbestos there. But the report has asbestos from a couple years ago. Why the report suddenly you find is fraudulent? So I remember in March during the prelim hearing, you had raised these issues and provided us with leather.

And you're right, a couple weeks later we were able to review and Uh, when we found that there were conditions that needed to be corrected, we worked with— we worked with our partners at DEP to see that was resolved. I don't remember all the details of the issue, but I'm happy to come back with more details if you want that.

Um, very specifically, um, DEP, um, reviewed the documents that, um, that were submitted as part of that letter, and they were the— they were the agency that identified that there were false documents filed with that filing, and they issued the stop work order on the site. Once they issued the stop work order on the site, Department of Buildings followed suit and waited for a new ACP-5 to be issued by the— by DEP.

Once that happened, we were able to lift the stop work order. order, but we followed the stop work order issued by DEP. Okay, thank you. And also, you know, the developer already doing demolition there for a couple weeks before you guys issued the stop order. That actually put the community in danger already. And also, the community also finds on that site, 2501 86th Street, was a flooding zone.

And the plan, floor plan was approved there, did not say it's flooding zone. If it's flooding zone, the first floor should have— the lowest floor of resident area must be elevated to above the BFE base floor. So they need to raise— they cannot build anything in the first floor. But on the plan, we see in cities approve the project, they are building stuff in the first floor.

How do you explain that? So we received your letter very recently. I think we're also double-checking this letter internally with not only the plan team, but with the floodplain manager, which is another role and responsibility that Department of Buildings With the BFE, it's more focused on residential use versus other uses in the building. But I think our commitment is to try to get you a response this week on our evaluation to make sure that no approvals missed any of the questions that you've just raised.

And also, that judge also denied the developer, Sandhu, suing one of the community members. have access of his backyard, the judge already ruled out the case and then denied. So they don't have the access. How are you going to approve their demolition permit? I'm not familiar. We can look into the court case you're referencing and if there is something— if there is a condition that they needed to meet in order to have either egress, pedestrian safety in place, and they don't have that, that would impede their ability to move forward, and they would have to come back to us with a different solution.

So we'll just have to look into the question. So as a result, the demolition itself, both what already occurred and what SANDU wished to do in the future, is illegal, should not approve, right? Yes. If there is something improper or doesn't meet the code requirements or the legal requirements for moving forward, many of the tools we talked about in the testimony and here at the hearing is what we use to put a project on hold, whether it's temporary or longer, you know, or even longer.

But we can look into some of the issues you just raised, and we will get back to you on the floodplain question this week. Thank you. And also, it troubles me, the developer like Sandhu, they keep getting, like, against the rule, doesn't pay the city fine, why they still keeping getting their permit? And they revoked permit and then they get it again.

Who authorized to revoke the permit first and then get the permit again? It's If a permit is revoked, it's likely that there is something about the approval that was wrong, was not— they didn't supply us with the information that we need, something changed. Sometimes a permit is revoked because the insurance lapses for one of the key permit holders on the project.

We are an agency that is pushing and trying to get owners to move toward compliance. So when an owner does come into compliance, then because we have an as-of-right structure for construction permits, they can apply to have their permit move forward, reinstated, a number of different pathways for different strategies. But this developer has been— have a lot of fraudulent reports, have fraudulent history, has bribery history.

How come this type of developer still allowed to get permits in New York City. This is a concern New York City residents have, and this is a concern of a lot of community members. I know that you have a lot of concerns about the development sites. We've tried to— particularly since March when you brought this up, I think we've been in constant contact with your office trying to resolve or look at each issue that comes up, and we're happy to continue doing that.

We will look at any issue that you've raised. We'll investigate And if there is an action that we need to take, the department will take the action. Yeah, I also brought more paperwork. If Sergeant at Arms can pass to Commissioner. This is actually more documents that our community finds. Hope you can take a look. And also we send another letter on October 16th, more information we find.

Community can do— find more information than DOB, right? I feel pretty confident about our technology ability to look into information, but we do appreciate when folks raise things to our awareness. It's the partnership that makes most of these projects most successful. The community feels if it's a city project, they can get whatever permits they want and then put the community in danger because the flood zone, it's a big issue in the area.

No one give concern. No one say anything about it. And they just want to build a building there, put the whole community in danger. Please help us to address this issue. Thank you, Chair. We hold our city projects to the highest standards as we would on the private side. You can talk to city partners and I'm sure they would share the same.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Juang. So now Councilmember Joseph. Thank you, Chair. Similar concerns as my colleague, and I've called on several occasions about this one project in my district on Bedford Avenue. That's become a nightmare for me for safety issues. Constituents call. How staffed up is your office to deal with these in rapid time? And what's the timeline when we call you for these things to happen?

This is constant. And Bedford Avenue is my little project now that I hope DOB can help solve. Shaking of the ground when they were building. And stop issues are only for 24 hours. Talk to me about, are you staffed up enough to— as we continue to develop the city, we want to build block by block. Are you— do you have the capacity?

Do you have the infrastructure to support all of these things? So the 609 inspectors, the overall inspector force, actually represents one of our highest totals in recent years, probably since 2020. Additionally, the changes this year in partnership with OMB to move forward faster with the hiring process has allowed us to fill vacancies even before getting additional lines, which is going to be a huge complement to increasing that force and responding more quickly.

On construction safety enforcement, that's related to construction safety sites on Our major sites, our Priority A response, that's about 3 hours. Priority B response is about 1 to 2 days. Priority C and Priority D is closer to 4 days. And then I would say that in addition to our traditional borough enforcement work between 8 and 4, we do have real-time enforcement, which gets to a construction site within 12 hours.

And then when there is a serious major hazardous issue, we can deploy our emergency response team, our ERT team, overnight and on weekends. What about when developers decide to violate their permit and start building at night? That was something we saw in my district on Clarkson Avenue. I don't know, they think no one was watching. They started building in the middle of the night and the constituents are calling my office consistently.

How do we help with that? And when I call, Who is going to come out at 10:00 at night when the developers are not supposed to be building at 10:00 PM? Typically, it would be ERT, uh, the emergency response team, that would be deployed. They're also the ones who are, are there when, again, a major emergency, a fire happens.

So we do have, uh, coverage for this. Um, when it comes to those who are also violating after-hours permits, that's something that we're tracking, and then Typically, it may lead to follow-up inspections and other enforcement actions that we can take. It may lead to either a violation, a partial stop work order, or a full stop work order on those sites.

But once they pay the fine, they feel they can carry on and do as they please in communities. That's exactly what we're getting, that it's okay, I'll just pay the fine and carry on in disrupting the community and not being good neighbors and destroying. So that's what my community is facing at a rapid rapid rate in my district, and we would really love some support from DOB, HPD.

And I know it's an interagency thing. I hope you guys are sitting and talking to each other and having a plan because we're going to build block by block. But as we're building, we also have to be considerate of folks, long-term residents who have been there, homeowners. I have one constituent who they're building, they're squeezing in a building right in between 2 private homes, and her property is damaged now.

What do you tell someone who's an older adult who has their home This is generational wealth for communities of color. And when folks come in and destroy and think they can get away with this, this is unacceptable for our communities. But there's no recourse, 'cause developers feel that, hey, this is just a slap on the wrist. I can pay my fine and I can move on and continue this.

So for me, I'm saying this, I'm at the point where I'm like kind of frustrated at— because I feel like I keep hitting a wall and there's no recourse for this type of behavior. For— we are exploring, we have in the past, and we're exploring if we can— there's more aggressive use of criminal summonses and nuisance abatements, which is legal actions that we do in coordination with the Law Department.

They can be very difficult cases to bring forward and try. How many have you tried this year, or how many have you issued and how many have you tried? I think we can look up those numbers for you. That would be great. This year so far we've issued 71 criminal court summonses. So as the Commissioner mentioned, we are using that tool more and more, thanks in part to the additional staffing we received as a result of the proactive enforcement program we were discussing earlier.

That's compared to 36 in calendar year 2025. How many of them are— any of them were ever dismissed through the OAT office? This, I mean, this would be separate. This is Oath being a different jurisdiction versus us going to Supreme Court with our criminal summonses and nuisance abatements. Okay. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Joseph. And yeah, just to echo the frustration, it's something that I face too. I've had, and this is anecdotal, but, you know, properties that have gone up completely. that neighbors will say the whole thing was done, there was never paperwork put up, and nobody ever came. I mean, and then did they call 311?

That was a question. But there's just a lot of work that happens, especially in the smaller projects, right, in the smaller sites, that there's a lot of concern around. Echoing that. Thank you. Okay. So I'm going to move to questions about the task forces that you've mentioned invitations went out for. So starting with the Mayor's Committee on Construction Safety, can you give us a sense of, you know, what the agendas will look like?

What will be the scope? You know, you mentioned root causes of persistent construction injuries and fatalities. I imagine falls, but what are other items that you will be looking at, and who has been invited to So I'll just start with the second part first. So currently invitations are out, and typically with our committees, like with our Building Code Committee, once we confirm who's on the, on the, on the committee, on the task force, that's something we make sure that we are putting publicly out to the public.

But as I said earlier, we believe that we'll have a strong mix of labor representatives, workers, and worker rights organizations, industry experts, and of course various senior-level officials both from City Council and from the administration. And then getting into the agenda, I mean, I think it's fair to say that these are starting topics. Obviously through a conversation you can go into other areas, but I had mentioned earlier about the enforcement tools.

We may look at personal protection, PPE, PPE equipment, accountability gaps, as has come up already in this hearing, may also come up in the conversation, repeatedly violates— violations and how safety standards interact with that. And I think a big part of this also is about emerging technologies. So whether that's on the enforcement side, wearable gear, I think when we also talk about— I think that's a good point.

Accountability and responsibility both on the agency side and the workers on site. Is there a culture or— there's a culture mechanism we need to force more? And then the environmental impact. So I mentioned earlier, but focus on how to protect workers during excessive heat waves, for instance, is something that really took shape this summer. We want to continue that conversation.

Thank you, Commissioner. It's helpful to understand. And just sort of a side thread, you started talking a bit about falls, which are the leading cause of construction-related injuries and fatalities. And, you know, sort of, you know, the fact that construction-related fatalities hover around the same number year after year, it's 8, 9, 10, 8, 9, 10. And as you said, even one is too many.

So in addition, my first question is, does DOB— do you have the numbers for the number of fall deaths, construction falls— I'm sorry, construction fatalities in general prior to the SST program implementation and post? specifically with respect to falls, has there been a difference? Has there been a, you know, or have fewer of these fatalities happened after the implementation of SSTs where you say that there is content about preventing falls?

The SST program obviously took a little while to implement, designing courses, registering the course providers. But specifically with regards to your question related to worker falls, for calendar year 2024, very specifically, we had 251 construction-related incidents. That's a lot. related to injuries, specifically related to worker falls. And then in 2025, that number decreased to 163. And then this year, calendar year again, to date, we are at 110.

So that is yielding results. And as the commissioner said in his testimony, it's not just the specific training. And the commissioner mentioned a word just now, culture. And that's something that every— all the outreach, all the training, all the work that we've done with our proactive inspections, we talk about all the time. And construction safety is exactly that.

It's changing the culture on the job sites. And the commissioner mentioned that as part of the task force that we're looking to put together. When we meet with owners, when we meet with construction general contractors, that's exactly what we talk about, is changing the culture on site and making safety the priority for those job sites. And safety doesn't mean you're slowing down work.

Safety doesn't mean that it's more expensive. Safety just means that you're being thoughtful with the work on the construction site. If you think about the different partnerships that are in this, so very recently it was the Scaffold and Access Industry Association, which is the national association for the New York City Special Riggers Association, in Long Island City did a demonstration project of different tie-off rescue scenarios, basically more efficient ways to execute on those actions.

And one of the things hearing from them is repetition. In addition to the conversation, but in the off times when you're not doing your work, doing the time to repeat these actions and make it muscle memory. And so if you take that mindset and you look at it across the board, making sure that identifying, spotting barriers near open holes, like everyone looking for themselves, looking at their partner's responsibilities, checking out for them.

It's— that's the kind of network that yields better results at the end of the day. Got it. Thank you. What is it about— are people falling into unobstructed holes? Are folks not wearing harnesses? Harnesses? What is it? How is it that workers are falling? It's a wide range of things. Trip and fall hazards. If material is not, you know, put in the places they're supposed to and people are navigating, you know, unorganized sites, or if people are at elevated places and they're handling too much equipment or there's not enough people around. securing and creating a secure environment and someone falls.

I mean, there are a number of— or if the structures to move up and down, temporary staircases are installed and the right landing or walk-off point isn't put in properly. There's a lot of different ways that we count falls and ways to prevent those issues. Just wanted to highlight, in 2018, In 2019, we had 759 worker-related injuries.

And as the Commissioner and Chair, you mentioned, year to date in terms of number of injuries, we are at, for calendar year 2026, 266. That is a substantial decrease in the number of injuries. Thank you. that we're seeing at construction sites. And everything that we've been talking about here today, and happy to continue working with the council on just making that number get to zero, right?

That should be the goal of everyone here. Deputy Commissioner Patino, aging that bill really, really paid off. Absolutely. That's why Miguel mentioned 2018, because 'Cause that's when we started implementing site safety training. Right. Right. And when you think about the site safety training cards, over 18 million hours of training has come as a result of that work.

Over 960,000 cards, over 530,000 active cards. And so people are buying into the process. And because we have that, we were able to have this very easy platform to then think beyond, as I mentioned in the testimony, beyond just the physical dangers of the workplace and quickly introduce and roll out mental health and suicide prevention awareness, which is becoming more and more another issue on our job sites.

And so it's continuing to yield indirect benefits that we didn't expect, which is the ability to go beyond just what we sought out in 2018. Yeah, thank you. I think it's really important to just elevate that and lift that up, and I will do my best to do it. But we do pass a lot of laws here.

I won't speak to the quality of all of them, but some of them are really, really important and changes, you know, change outcomes dramatically. I'll just throw out one more stat just because it's an amazing number. We are close to 40 million taps on our SST cards. That means between the department's proactive and reactive inspections, but it also means that folks on job sites, construction supers, site safety professionals, the general contractors themselves are ensuring 40 million times that the workers going on construction sites have the necessary training.

Thank you. And to go back to Councilmember Juang and Councilmember Joseph's point and what I started with talking about smaller sites, do you have a disaggregation of how many of these injuries are happening at smaller sites versus larger sites? Right? The threshold, as I understand it, being a major building that is 75 feet tall or 7 stories, 100 square feet or larger, how many of these injuries and fatalities are happening in these kind of sites versus smaller?

I acknowledge I didn't give you this in advance, so you have a pass to follow up. We will follow up with that number for you. Thank you. And I think you can see the gears turning here that, you know, site safety training cards and the program has been such a success in the larger sites, should we consider lower thresholds?

Send, right? Send the text message. Okay. Thank you. And do you have any information, you know, regarding, again, focusing— and we will talk about this, I'm sure, in depth in The task force, or you will in the task force, if I'm invited, I will say this, but anything about the titles of folks, the roles of the workers who have fallen to their deaths, any trends there, union, non-union, of the fatalities related to falls?

By local law, if there is an injury on a site, the owner or competent professional professional on that site must report to the agency. So when that report is made by them through either calling the department or using— we have an online portal that they can use. They can self-report that information to us. And so we do— we can give you the data of the self-reported style.

I think the difficulty would be getting to what exactly is the role. But we'll say that it's a variety of different roles on a site that we're seeing different issues come up. Because very often, whether you're an electrician, a carpenter, a laborer, you are often interacting with any of the things I mentioned earlier that can create trip hazards, can move you to an elevated position, can have you walking through a site where debris or material is not the properly handled and put in the appropriate place.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. I want to acknowledge that we've been joined by Councilmember Wilson. So moving to the AECR— I know what it stands for. I don't remember what it stands for. But the other task force that is being convened, thank you for the invitation received. We'll be there. Affordable and Efficient Code Reform Task Force. So can you help us understand how the AECR will relate to the usual process that DOB undertakes for code revisions?

Absolutely. So, you know, since 2008 model code program, we've continued to work on a regular cycle of every 3+ years refreshing and trying to meet a building code, borrowing from the international code, making sure it meets local needs, local standards. The last one, as you mentioned, was 2022. That process of over 14 committees, over 400 volunteers, that work is immense.

Where, I mean, we're pulling from national standards, we're pulling from the international building codes, we're looking at state and local requirements. And from time to time, we have found that to get things done that are equally important but can create a lot of congestion in the code committee work, parallel process— not supplement, parallel processes could be helpful.

That is what we did for the existing building code, which we worked on successfully with the council. It's actually how we worked on the construction safety laws that we're talking about today, creating a parallel process that got us to the point of success that we're talking about right now. So what the Affordable— what ACER, the Affordable and Efficient Code Reform Task Force, is doing is looking at a set of issues and questions that have been raised over the years and giving it more dedicated space to explore and understand whether there are things that we should advance, at the very least have more material discussions.

And in addition to that, there— much of our code committee work happens among technical experts with sort of less availability for broader policy and housing-involved industry experts to be in the mix within a dedicated conversation. Thank you. about how they involve in the housing space. So we are looking at a broader membership, a broader community that is going to be supplemented by many of the same subject matter experts that are involved in the code committee process.

And coming out of that, and you will see in the housing plan, we talk about some of the questions and issues that we have heard from community members, both on the industry side and the public side, whether it's It's looking at elevators, policy ideas around elevators, policy ideas around alternate materials for potable water. These are things that are very— can be very technical.

And we're bringing the policy experts and the technical individuals together in this supplemental process. But the code committee work will continue. And we look forward to working with the council on that. Great. Thank you. Appreciate that.

All right. So I'm going to turn it to Councilmember Wilson, and then we'll come back. Thank you very much, Chair. Hello, Commissioner. Hello. I apologize. We have dueling committees today. So I apologize if maybe this was talked about a little bit already. But you mentioned in your testimony about some of the emerging technologies that you're considering to help improve safety standards.

I'm just curious if you could elaborate a little bit more. I see about the building tech lab, but I'm curious about what other sort of developing technologies you're considering, particularly, you know, scaffolding is the bane of my existence in my district, and many times it's going up for a very long period of time, understandably so for safety reasons.

But, like, what technologies are we looking at to help bring those down faster and not need to have what really appears to be quite a dated safety mechanism up for such long periods of time? So, I think if you think historically, DOB has a couple of different ways in which we try to engage with new technology ideas.

First and foremost, we have an innovation board, which we'll call from time to time to answer very specific questions. We've used it to look at accessibility opportunities as part of the Where We Live plan, where DOB and HPD partnered to see how we can make our existing building stocks more accessible. In 2021, I believe, we used the Innovation Board to look at the idea of integrating more technology into facade inspections.

And there was a program, T2D2, with Thornton Tomasetti using drone technology, which actually became the bedrock of the later research that we did with Thornton Tomasetti that led to the report in 2024 that now is resulting in both the enforcement laws and policy changes with the council, but also our own efforts to try to amend and create new ways of moving forward with both inspections but work done on facade walls.

It recommends a greater use of drone technology. We're, you know, working with a number of universities right now on building out what comes next. But if you look at what you were already seeing, we're going to integrate more photo or drone captured imagery for buildings that have to meet their FISP requirements between— for buildings that are 40 years or younger and can demonstrate a safe report, they'll be able to use technology instead of hands-on inspections for FISP— for check-ins every 3 years and not have to do a FISP report until year 12, which is one example. that we were able to do using the research that we gained.

I think the other part of it that we want to look at is drone technology overall to see if we can capture data citywide and continue to move that number of 40 years older and older. As we, you know, I would say that right now is the first time the research that we were able to collect, the first time we had a database, both historically and being able to look forward, of facade, facade research and enforcement in the City of New York.

Prior to that, for the 40 years prior to that, we were working off an understanding and individual instances collected over 4 decades, but not a database. So now that we have the database, now that we're going to be experimenting with using drone or high-quality photos to examine facades and see how that takes the place of hands-on inspections, we believe we'll be able to do more, and we've signed on some research assistance to be able to help us.

The other thing I would say is it's not all technology on facades. Some of it had to do with trying to see if there was a smaller number of drops, if we can extend even the cycle from 5 to 6 on older buildings, and then also creating a standardized book or standardized set of rules and approaches that exterior wall examinations can work off.

We find that there was too much variation in approaches and how people were doing that work. That variation translates into higher dollar amounts and different scopes that may cost buildings unnecessarily. So we are providing that information, city-sponsored, to create cost savings through that alone. Thank you.

So, information, guidance, and I think you all will add. Just specifically regarding, you know, you mentioned scaffolding or sidewalk sheds, overhead protection. I would invite everyone to come to 280 Broadway. We have 2 new sidewalk shed designs on display right in front of the building that we are putting rules together. to give the designs out to everyone.

So, previously, a couple months ago, we had 2 other sidewalk sheds up in front of 280 Broadway that recently won an award from Time Magazine for innovation. Invite you folks to go take a look. They're really cool. Can I ask one more question? Yes, please. Thank you. On the— another thing that I So it's kind of a 2-part question.

The other things that I hear is once building repairs are done and they're ready to bring down the scaffolding, that there's often like a lag time between when their paperwork, everything is submitted for final review, and the agency giving clearance to bring it down, even though work has been completed. So I'm curious, what— how long does that usually take if someone has submitted and you know, how long— what's the review period time to bring— to give the clearance to bring the scaffolding down?

And then, are there other factors that are contributing to that, like staffing, et cetera? And then the other part is, there was a packet of scaffolding legislation and reform that happened in the previous council. I'm curious if you have any data or metrics to show the effectiveness of that legislation, which was intended to shorten the amount of time that scaffoldings are up?

Answer the first question first. Depending on the height of the building, so if the building is 6 stories and less, if the job application for the repairs has been signed off by the owner's registered design professional, that sidewalk shed can be removed as soon as that sign-off occurs. And again, that is wholly with the owner's registered Yes. —or design professional.

If that building is within FISP or Local Law 11, so over 6 stories in height, our turnaround time for those amended reports— and those amended reports tell us when an unsafe building becomes safe— is 2 weeks. So that includes an inspection and a thorough review of the plans and the report that has come in. If the building is 15 stories and up, it's Site safety.

It's a major building with regards to facades repair. So that is a FISP review from the compliance side, but it's also a full inspection of site safety that occurs as well. But our timeframe for that is also within 2 weeks. I think speaking to the council legislation, we are, you know, continuing to implement new parts of it.

We just had an announcement recently about movement on rules that we're working to continue to effectuate the goals of that. I would say we were able to announce that approximately 1,200 sheds have been down since January, a decrease of more than 15% in 10 months. One of the major things I want to highlight is that we have moved from a 1-year permit on a shed to 90 days.

The other linkage is that previously a shed renewal permit would come with just the request of moving the shed forward. We are now linking the responsibility of that shed with an explanation of what the owner is doing to alleviate the problem that brought the shed up in the first place. And so there's always going to be a mix of different sheds in New York City.

In fact, it's important that we continue to have pedestrian protection. But we're doing more things to say that this should only be up for as long as It has to be up, and he has to tell us why it's going up. And are you finding with the 90-day permit that folks are asking for extensions, or is that 90-day period sufficient?

I think it's a little bit early in order to make— with enough of a sample pool to tell you where people are landing with it. But I do think that we still have owners who are working to get the financial wherewithal to make the repairs, or working on availability on labor and contracts with the right contractors to do the work.

And so we're looking at both the outside factors and our own processing time to see how this is impacting the market. I'll just add one other thing. As of this morning, and the department has a map of all the sidewalk sheds in the city that totals the numbers. As of this morning, that number was 6,861. At the beginning of this year, I believe we were, as the Commissioner mentioned, over 8,000.

But again, that is a pretty significant drop in 10 months. But again, and I was joking a little bit about checking out the sheds in front of 280, once the sidewalk sheds and the new designs come out and folks start using those new designs, the experience of somebody walking down the block changes significantly. And that's the real goal here, is to change how the interaction between pedestrians and overhead protection in the city is really felt by the public, right?

One of the recent local laws was to increase the height of the sidewalk shed to allow more light in. So, you'll see that with the new designs. And specifically, in front of 280, we have an angled design that lets light in, that still does its job, right, making sure that the public is protected. But that look and feel is very, very different with the new sidewalk shed designs.

And then, the last thing that is coming up, coming into implementation, I believe, in January next year, is the civil penalties that we have associated with leaving sidewalk sheds up for over 180 days. And that concludes the entire package of local laws. And those are the big sticks that we have coming down the pipe. So it's, it's the reduction in permit duration, it's the reporting every time they renew a permit, And then if the owner, very specifically the building owner, doesn't make progress towards effecting those repairs, that's when those civil penalties will be enacted.

Yeah, I'm taking up a lot of time. So you already gave me some extra time. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Okay. Thank you. And I just want to highlight when we have gone back and forth in my district about specific scaffolding and asked Sorry, can you clarify, did you just say we went from 8,000 to 800?

No, a little over 8,000 to about 6,800. So a 1,200-unit drop, about 15% over 10 months. Okay. And then, yeah, what I was going to say about my own district is I appreciate the department's updates on the work that is happening, but the answer to the question of when will they be down is is not in there.

So would love to follow up on my in-district issues with scaffolding and public safety. Can you, with respect to after-hours variances, can you tell me how much construction is being done after hours and how many variances have been requested and granted? So I think we may have to come back to you with the after-hour variance numbers. Well, I can say on after-hour variances, there are very specific reasons, about 5, I believe, reasons why someone can apply for an after-hour variance.

We also keep a public map of after-hour variances where people can see where they have been approved and where they are active and for how long. And I apologize, but we will have to come back to you with a breakdown of that. No problem. Thank you. I appreciate the update. Back to Councilmember Juang.

Thank you, Chair. And Commissioner, I have a question. So after our variance, some you guys issue the variance. If you guys did not issue the variance, they're still doing the work, is there any punishment? Yes, we can— if we're able to capture a contractor doing work outside of their allowed hours, Then there are violations and other follow-up actions we could take as an agency.

So you mean catch their activity there? You guys have an inspector come during that time? Yes. But the community have recording saying they are during this time, they have 24-hour camera there. They start work before 5 o'clock in the morning and then still doing the work 9 o'clock at night. This happened in my district in 2024, and also recently, also this year, we called DOB, called 311.

When 311, DOB come, it's only during work hours. So during not working hour, what's the punishment, and how the community reach to DOB? So I can't speak to whether— what the action of someone putting a camera on another person's property, but I can say that when we do get information about after work hours, we try to work with the community to triangulate and schedule inspections if we can and be able to go and, you know, capture that action if it's happening during an hour that makes sense for that violation.

Thank you. Additionally, we work with your office, we work with other community groups, but we do need to have an inspector who is viewing the action and can attest to it to write the violation. Okay. Because I actually personally sent to city administration some videos after hours that the same developer, Sandhu, on 2501 86th Street, They are coming on Palm Sunday night around 9 o'clock doing the work, and they also come Sunday doing the work, and they also come before 6 o'clock in the morning doing the work.

It's all captured by community, and it's public information. Everyone knows that. You can find at least 10, 20 people testify that. Thank you. And also for the worker safety, when the community worker going to do the construction doesn't wear helmets, who they should report to? They should absolutely call 311 if they see any dangerous condition so that we can send one of the specialized units to go and inspect and see if something is not being done appropriately.

Absolutely. And as far as just to go back to the after-hour variance question, I think our most successful collaborations on going after that is when we work with you or a community member and try to triangulate if Sundays are typically where you're seeing the infraction happen. If it's Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Thursdays before 7:00 a.m., we can absolutely plan with our resources in advance to have someone there to capture that.

Because Those people, they are playing games with the community. They don't respect the community at all. They can come the middle of the night, start the work, and then they can come like very late in the evening time, start the work. We called many times, but we have videos, we have pictures, and the people doesn't wear helmets.

I just checked my phone in May. Just a few days ago, October, some people come to 2501 86th Street. They don't wear helmets at all. They're going to construction sites. And I think the community already reported to 311. Nothing was done there. We've done, as you know and the community knows, we have done many inspections of the site of That said, we will— our obligation is to respond to all the 311 complaints that come forward.

So there's no limitation on how often we're going to be responsive and continue to evaluate things. If there are particular time slots or moments where you feel like this is repetitive action, right after this hearing we can coordinate with your office and make sure that we're positioning our resources to be there where it's most actively happening. We want to be helpful in capturing activity that shouldn't be happening and issue the violations if appropriate.

Okay, thank you. Can we just send you pictures and tell you? Again, we need to have an inspector who can evaluate that. Everyone deserves due process in this issue, and so we have to make sure that we're respecting each right as well. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Juang.

Councilmember Wilson. Want to follow up? Thank you again. So another question about scaffolding. Sorry, I'm obsessed with scaffolding. Shelving and scaffolding seem to be the topic du jour. Another reason that I've heard, and I can think of a few specific examples of prolonged erection of scaffolding, has to do with disputes over access agreements between properties. Are there ways that the department is thinking about some procedural or legislative or some kind of change that may— through like something like arbitration, that when there are disputes between properties that we're not— we're trying to avoid going to drawn-out legal battles that result with, you know, maybe work being completed or not starting yet and keeping that scaffolding up for a sustained period of time that it doesn't need to be?

So there is a section of state law, 881, and most of these conversations are governed in civil— in state civil court, where there were recently in the last couple of years some changes to try to alleviate pressure and move these further along. We have heard other suggestions about doing this, but it largely is outside of the OB code lives in civil litigation and largely is at the state legislative level.

The other thing that we did as part of the shed reform work is also clarify different ways that people can use netting as a way of still meeting their pedestrian protection requirements that may not include staging structural elements on an adjacent property. So it's very often, given how congested and tight the city is, that access is needed.

But we are trying to see if there are other netting, other high-grade tight netting that can be used to be used in place of sheds, not only to start the work but keep the work going and complete it. So between that and I think that the arbitration or actions at the state level That we're still open to hearing ideas of how the agency can play a productive role.

You know, there's nothing further new. Those netting— that netting rule is something that we're working on toward the end of this year. And we've already, in the past— in most recent years, put out clarifications on related questions. So you think legislative changes specifically around, like, arbitration would have to be legislated at the— State— at the state level?

I think most recent discussions have been state-level conversations about Section 881. But when it comes to providing information about what's necessary, for instance, we work on a site safety plan that is required and necessary. We make sure that's available to the owner and the people doing the work so that when they have those conversations with the adjacent neighbor, They can have substantive conversations and hopefully resolve those discussions more quickly.

Well, I just hope that as we're measuring these new policy changes and we can have an open dialogue about reports about how these— how it's working for the scaffolding timelines. And I hope you can keep this committee informed about how you're tracking and what's working and not working. Yes, sir. Great. All right. Thank you so much, Councilmember Wilson.

So now I want to move to some questions that I believe were provided to you all beforehand. So they're more numbers and processes kind of questions so that we can all be on the same page. Moving back to construction-related injuries and fatalities, the MMR reports that construction-related injuries and fatalities excuse me, injuries fell 12% in FY 2026 from 263 to 320, while fatalities stayed at 8.

And I want to correct myself, I said 8 to 10 earlier, but it's 6 to 10— excuse me, 6 to 8 each year since fiscal year 2022 in, in terms of the number of fatalities. Um, what was the type of incident for each of the 8 fiscal year 2026 fatalities? How many of these 8 occurred at sites that required a site Safety manager, site safety coordinator, or construction superintendent?

How many of the 8 occurred at sites with open DOB violations or prior stop work orders? And how many construction fatalities have— has DOB recorded from July 20— excuse me, July 1st, 2026 to present? For fiscal year 2026, as you mentioned, we had 8 Fatalities. 5 of those 8 were related to worker falls. 1 was related to excavation soil work.

And then the last 2, 1 was burn inhalation and the last one was a struck-by. Thank you. And can you help us understand excavation and soil-related? What does that mean? So that is typically early on in a project when they are looking to install a basement and a cellar in a building. They have to dig down to install foundation or supportive excavation work.

So that is typically related What we call SOE, or underpinning work. To answer your second question, 2 of those 8 locations, 174 Jefferson Street and 3728 Crescent Street, the first one in Brooklyn, the second one in Queens, 2 of those required a construction super. And then to answer your last question, question. For this fiscal year, July 1st, 2026 to today, we have had only one construction-related fatality.

That was at 1748 Tudor Road. That was a one-family home, no construction super required on that job. Thank you. So of the 8 that occurred in fiscal year 2026, only 2 required a construction superintendent, you're saying? So 6 did not. That means that they were at smaller sites? It doesn't necessarily mean smaller sites. It just means the type of work that was occurring at those locations.

So it could be a large It could be a larger construction site that is doing a small alteration. It doesn't necessarily mean a smaller site. Thank you. And then how many of the sites related to these 8 fatalities, how many of those had open DOB violations or prior stop work orders? None of the 8 had prior stop work orders.

We'll have to get back to you on the violations. I don't have that data right here.

Thank you. DOB data shows that worker falls caused 163 of the 320 construction injuries and 6 of the 10 fatalities in 2025. Department of Buildings launched a citywide enforcement and education campaign in response, as you mentioned in your testimony, Commissioner. How many sites did Did the campaign inspect? How many violations and stop-work orders were issued for fall protection during the campaign?

Were the inspections proactive, and how were those inspections different from what DOB normally does? So I can tell you right now that at the end of last year, during the sweep, our inspectors found hazardous conditions endangering workers at 50 separate locations, resulting in stop-work orders for these sites. And like I said before, you know, we have a completely— we have a dedicated team for sweeps.

So this is a typical tool that we would use whenever we see an issue crop up that we need to handle. Got it. Thank you. And so how many sweeps were conducted in total as a result of that campaign? I think it's this— in the month of December, We sort of spent that month going through all 5 boroughs to check for code compliance and engage directly with workers on best practices.

I would just add, as part of that sweep, we also created some educational materials that we— and so it wasn't just the inspections that we did as part of that sweep, but we also Handed out flyers at those specific job sites. We spoke with workers. We spoke with the general contractors themselves. It was part inspection, part educational and outreach.

Thank you.

My next question is about the other, the category of fatalities and injuries, the incident type called other. In 2025, the other category accounted for 102 Of the 320 injuries and 3 of the 10 fatalities, the second largest category after worker falls. I think you already gave me for the fatalities, but for the injuries, can you give us an understanding of what kind of incidents DOB places in the other category?

And yes, and a little A little specific, but, you know, the other category has a lot into it. For example, burns, hazardous fumes, electrocutions, struck by. It is a category that we constantly look at because it is a multitude of things that go into that other category, and we realize it's It's a large category, but it is something that has a variety of elements to it.

Got it. Thank you. Do you have any plans to break that category up into different subcategories? Yeah, as we're shifting our system from our current system into DOBNow Inspections Plus, which hopeful happening towards the end of this year in phases and into next year, we will be doing exactly that. Thank you.

DOB's construction incident reporting classifies sites as union or non-union. Many sites, however, employ both union and non-union workers through different contractors and subcontractors, such as in the Pfizer Partial collapse. What criteria does DOB use to classify a site as union or non-union? Is the classification based on the general contractor, the share of union workers on the site, or the trade involved in the incident?

Who reports a site's union status to DOB? Does DOB verify? And finally, would DOB classify the former Pfizer headquarters conversion in Midtown as a union or non-union site? So, um, as a result of Local Law 78 of 2017, which was worked on by both the agency and the administration and the council. A number of steps were created to make sure that we were capturing details of an incident.

I mentioned earlier that when there is an incident, people are required to report within 3 business days, and through that portal or that call, they can self-ident— it is a self-identification, self-verification. We do not do a third-party check. check on that verification, but that information is also available on our website. So we make it available to the public, and there is a column specifically asking to verify nonunion versus union.

As far as the Pfizer building, based on what we know, we understand it was an open shop or mixed shop site with both nonunion and union trades that worked on Got it. So the only time that DOB learns whether a site is union or nonunion is when there is an incident that is reported. That answers the question?

That's correct. Again, our priority is regardless of affiliation, we focus on the worker, the incident, the accident, and how to prevent it in the future. Great. Thank you.

So next up, on July 23rd, 2026, On March 26th, the department issued a stop— a full stop-work order at 222 Broadway after learning that 2 cracked beams on the 32nd floor had been repaired in March 2026 without notice to the department. What enforcement action has DOB taken for this failure to notify, and is the stop-work order still in place?

At 222 Broadway, We issued numerous violations to numerous entities. And as you mentioned, the full stop work order to the site. We issued fail to notify to all the site safety professionals, the site safety manager, the construction super, the general contractor, and the special inspection agency, in addition to numerous other violations. We also issued commissioner's orders to the developer and the general contractor to implement an immediate monitoring protocol, weekly engineering reports to be submitted to the Department of Buildings, and then a peer review requirement on the structural design.

And the addition. And the stop work order, after the peer review was completed and all the necessary reports submitted to the department, we lifted the stop work order. Got it. Thank you. Okay. So I thought I had it somewhere, but I'm going to just ask it off the top of my head. For these full stop work orders, stop work orders, I'm understanding from your opening testimony, Commissioner, and from your answer just now, Deputy Commissioner, that the agency essentially keeps going back to see if conditions, dangerous conditions have been corrected.

Is that the case? I would just amend this slightly. So if there is a partial stop work order or a full stop work order, the contractor responsible person, the owner, knows that they have a responsibility to provide us with a means and method analysis and a corrective action strategy. Related to the issue that brought on that violation, that action.

Once that is submitted to the department and reviewed, and if an inspection is required, an inspection, then we'll take the steps to lift that partial or full stop work order. But there is a process that's involved, and it's contingent on the owner to demonstrate that they understand what was wrong, they corrected what was wrong, and that'll allow them to move forward.

So they submit to you means and methods, they submit to you what their corrective action plan is and then you accept that in every case? Do you go back and check that they're doing the work correctly? I'll just add one other statement. If the violation— if we don't hear back and it is an immediately hazardous violation, we will reinspect as part of our hazardous reinspection program.

So, if we do not hear back from them, we will reinspect. To answer your question just now, no, we don't just blindly accept their remediation plan. We have a whole team at the department that reviews any kind of documentation related to stop-work orders. Okay. You know, depending on what the remedy is and the violations, It could be a litany of things that need to get submitted to us.

And then we go and review the corrective action that has taken place on site to make sure it has been implemented, and an inspector will go out and confirm that. Great. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that.

So you talked in your testimony, I talked in my opening about What is it? I don't have the name here. Red code? Red card? Red code? Yes. September 2026, the Brooklyn DA, you all, and the Department of Investigation worked together to bring an indictment on Brooklyn-based construction training company for fraudulent SST cards. So can you share broadly how DOB enforces SST card requirements?

Are you going on site? Are you spot checking proactively? So, our SST card work sits a lot— sits more— most of it sits with our compliance and risk assessment work. I think right now we're at 126 confirmed— sorry, excuse me, I'm just finding my page. Paul? Thank you. So, we have— we're at 126 SST cards. SST course providers registered with department buildings.

In fiscal year '26, we conducted 154 audits resulting in 17 denials. You know, as of July 1st, 2025, what has given us more oversight here is that course providers must register to become course providers. And while there's been 17 denials, others have been— That's a lot. approved. I'll note that Red Code was one of the 17 that were denied, both in this case with Red Code, another case, Valor, which was an even more egregious case that we worked on with the department— sorry, with the Manhattan DA's office.

Often we're, you know, through our audits or tips that we get from community, we're putting in information and we're making these referrals to our partners in the DA's office. office or DOI or both since they have prosecutorial powers to be able to take action. Thank you. What about on job sites? Are inspectors checking each worker for an SST card?

There are 2 elements here. One, the taps are one way of demonstrating that there's an exterior barrier that's making sure people are tapping, but then if we are like construction site, we may talk to workers to make sure that people are doing what they're supposed to and have the cards that they're supposed to. Thank you. I'll just add, with regards to the course providers, we have a team of investigators that audit those course providers.

So they will check that the curriculum matches what's required. We will ensure that we are getting their course catalogs and time on those courses. We will pretend to be workers and sit in on those classes and make sure that the entire training is happening. We will check attendance records for those courses. We have a very in-depth check that we do on these course providers.

With regards to the site safety card requirements, we do confirm with the construction supers, site safety coordinators, managers, and check the logs that all the workers on site are— have the necessary SST requirements, and then we'll do a spot check on site with specific cards. Each card has a QR code that we we can check to ensure that it is a valid card.

Got it. Thank you. What— Red Code, what happens to the million dollars that they stole from the workers who paid for fraudulent cards? So I think the Manhattan DA can look at a number of different enforcement actions that they pursue as part of their prosecution. In the interim, We, you know, many— maybe workers who didn't realize they were part of a scheme.

And so that's why, in addition to the enforcement action, there is also the remediation work that we do with Small Business Services, which has had a history of providing accessible and free training so that those workers, through the transition period of 90 days, can get the training they need to get back on sites. I think it's also And important to note that these are immigrant communities that we're talking about.

So we've put equal strength in doing the education and awareness out in English, but many members of this particular— that use this particular training facility spoke Bengali. And so we've been working extensively to connect with Bengali news outlets, doing videos in Bengali. to get them aware that they need to come in, get retrained, so that they can continue doing their work.

Thank you, Commissioner. And the classes are available in multiple languages? There are each— there are many providers who provide multiple languages, and we're always looking for more course providers to meet other edges of the space. Got it. And are the courses generally free, or this is just a case for the red code workers? They're both. So that we have courses that are paid for courses, and then SBS, since the beginning of 196, has worked to provide free programs.

And I think a lot of them are also there through collaboration with worker rights organizations and organizations that work with immigrant communities that are mission-driven who understand that the price point can be hard. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner.

Safety logs. I've been waiting all hearing to ask you about these. Everyone has. This is why we're all here. Very, very exciting. So DOB requires site safety managers, coordinators, and construction superintendents to keep safety logs. How does DOB check whether site safety logs are kept and if reports are accurate? When does DOB review these logs? Is it during a routine inspection, unannounced visit, or only after an incident?

Do they submit them? And I'll stop there because this is This is like a 7-part question. So the department does require these documents as necessary to verify compliance. We check for site safety logs at every inspection. It's done during the routine, the unannounced, or the incident inspection incidents. I think you asked us to look at fiscal year 2026.

All site inspections included a site safety log review. Total sites inspected, which included the site safety log review, is 32,472. And if I can go forward, because I'm sure you'll also want to know about missing, incomplete, or falsified logs. That's right. Um, that we issued 260 OLT summonses in fiscal year 2026 for missing, incomplete, or falsified logs.

Got it. Thank you. How do you know that they're falsified? Are you checking for cadence of entries into the log? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's my understanding. Yegale can speak more. So, they'll review not just the logs for that day, but they'll review the history of the logs and, you know, ensure that there isn't any discrepancies in those logs.

And, you know, that's just part of the inspection and the inspection checklist that are— Amazing construction inspectors, you know, walking the sites. They can, you know, take a look at the average number of folks that they're seeing on site, making sure that matches the logs. And as I said, they'll do spot checks on the SSD requirements. So construction safety inspections are not quick inspections, and our inspectors are very thorough when they do those inspections.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And are these marble notebooks on a worksite? Are these electronic logs? There is a— there is— I kind of wish they were. I mean, I'm nostalgic for marble. There's actually a building bulletin that we issued out in 2024 that talks about the format, allows for a digital format. We require these documents, and we're seeing a lot of a lot of sites moved to digital, quite frankly.

So, you know, RIP marble notebooks. It would be quite a few marble notebooks if they were just marble notebooks. But, you know, the bulletin that allowed for transition from paper to digital not only helps the industry, but it helps us as well. As you can imagine, going through digital records, is a lot faster than going through notebooks of notebooks of paper.

But it's also helpful— we require as part of the digital format to have tablets or some sort of digital screen that we can walk around with so we can identify worker names, we can look at site safety plans as we're walking through the sites. So So it's a big benefit to the inspectors as well to have everything digitally.

Absolutely. And maybe we can have sites proactively submit to DOB so you're always looking. Big Brother is watching. Okay. I've never said that in an upbeat tone in my life. It's hitting well.

So 2 more from me and Councilmember Juang, let me know if you have any other questions. So turning to the unfortunate tragedy at 578 Cozine Avenue in Brooklyn where a worker was seriously injured in 2018, this was a situation where DOB cited the property owner and the asbestos contractor working at the site for failing to safeguard the workers.

An oath hearing officer then dismissed the summons because DOB didn't have jurisdiction over the site. when the incident happened. DEP had jurisdiction. So just looking at 578 Cozine Avenue as an example, are these sort of changes in jurisdiction on job sites common? Have you been able to identify gaps in enforcement? Because I understand, we understand that at 578 Cozine Avenue, there was no— no agency that held that worksite accountable because of the jurisdictional issues between the agencies.

We can look into the specifics with— related to this address. The normal flow between DEP and DOB is the abatement work needs to be permitted first and completed, and then the ACP-5 or the ACP-2021 submitted to the department before we issue a permit for the work associated with our work. So, that is generally the time— the flow of how the work occurs.

There is an overlap between the work DEP does and DOB does on certain jobs. And depending on those jobs, what's known as an H-2 filing or a worker safety plan has to be submitted, and both DEP and DOB review those worker safety plans specifically associated for when abatement work needs to happen. The only thing I'll add here is that In all cases, because of the federal role here, OSHA continues to be— have oversight.

And we work closely with OSHA either in information capacity, coordination capacity. So where OSHA is involved, then we can be of assistance when these incidents happen. We do that as well. Yeah. And you're meeting with— both OSHA and NIKOSH on a monthly basis? I don't believe it's a monthly— oh, OSHA is monthly. Sorry. OSHA is monthly. And NIKOSH?

No. I mean, I've recently— we've recently talked to Charlene and NIKOSH. I think we're trying to involve them, particularly as we approach this committee and think about what more we can be doing. We certainly are talking to them earlier in the year as they They put together their stats and numbers and put their findings. So there is a line of communication, but we're not meeting with NIKOSH monthly.

With regards to OSHA and our monthly meetings, that is headed up by Jill's team, our Assistant Commissioner for Construction Safety Engineering. Our monthly meetings, we go over all necessary incidents that happen over that month. It might be worker injury or fatality. We go over the investigations that we are doing, that they are doing, the enforcement actions, and then the investigations.

A lot of times, the investigations and the interviews of the workers happens jointly with OSHA, and then a lot of times OSHA does rely on our investigative reports related specifically to fatalities as part of their enforcement actions as well. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much, Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner.

So my last question, just to close, you know, coming back to the issue of small sites, how would you describe the ways in which DOB oversees safety at small sites that fall below the threshold for a site safety manager or coordinator? We still require competent individuals with training that includes being aware of both culture and best practice on safety to be on new construction on small sites.

We still— the same rules and regulations apply and expectations apply, including the same enforcement actions. Additionally, we are— With the proactive enforcement work, we're able to get more data on and build a better database of where we think hotspots or, or dangerous activities happening, which can include small sites as we build up the proactive enforcement work. And then of course we always have our reactive work that's either feeding the proactive work or continuing to rely on our borough enforcement real-time enforcement and emergency response teams to make sure that workers are safe.

Beyond that, when we do construction safety outreach education, there's no division between small sites and big sites. We're trying to disseminate and instill that education to everyone. I'll just add with regards to, and you mentioned this earlier, our major buildings, 7 stories or 75 feet and above, require the site safety manager coordinator requirements. However, the construction super requirements are for a much larger pool of buildings.

Any new building, any major alteration where you're renovating more than 50% of the floor area, vertical, horizontal— vertical, excuse me, vertical or horizontal enlargements, full demolitions, all must have a registered construction super, and that is a registration that they have with the Department of Buildings. And lastly, we have new regulations on the number of job sites a construction super can oversee.

At the end of this year, that will be one job site per construction super, and that is a— Yeah. That is a change from the current that originally started from 10 sites that you mentioned it's hard to get to 6 locations, so these folks supposedly were getting to 10. Over the years, we have reduced that from 10 to 5 to 3 and now to 1.

Right. So we will have 1 very dedicated individual that is responsible to oversee construction safety and ensure that the work on that site is happening according to plan. And that is a big step for the department and for the city as a whole. And 1, 2, and 3 homes, contractors are licensed through the department's DCWP, Consumer Worker Protection.

So there is additional layers of licensing oversight for that level. Who is licensed by DCWP? Contractors on 1 to 3 family homes. So general contractors are licensed by DCWP? Home improvements. I think the term is home. Yes. It was today years old. Okay. All right. That was actually my next question is how many— whatever figure you might have that can shed light on this, but how much work is happening by just straight-up unlicensed folks?

They don't have a general contractor's license. They don't have— they're not electricians, they're not plumbers. They're like— how often is DOB finding that, that kind of worksite? We do report on— so there are different divisions that handle different parts of it. So we license near over 2 dozen trades, I think about 31 different licensees, over 28,000 licensees.

This is done in addition to the work that the state, the Department of Education, state level has in— on this oversight. We do publish our data on investigations that the Office of Special Inspections does for unlicensed plumbers or unlicensed electricians. That's on our website. And then for contractors, there isn't a general contractor license. There's a safety registration that must be obtained. through the department.

And I don't know if we have all those numbers, but I think you guys will share what we have. I can get you the specific numbers later. But we have 3 basically registrations. One for GC-123s. So those are general contractors that work on 1-2-3 family homes. And then as the commissioner mentioned, we have what what's known as a GC safety registration.

And then we have a general contractor insurance tracking number that we use to track other folks. So we have 3 different buckets of where folks can fall into. The safety registration bucket is typically the folks that are doing the larger buildings, new buildings, alterations, major alterations, again, 50% of the existing floor area, generally fall into that safety registration bucket.

I'll get you the individual numbers in each one of those buckets. All right.

Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for that. Um, Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, Assistant Commissioner, Assistant Commissioner, all of the friends who are in the audience. Um, I, I know these are a lot of work, so I, I just appreciate all your preparation for today and the, the great discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember. Okay, we're gonna take a quick 5-minute break and then open it up for testimony from the public. Okay, thank you so much. No problem. Thank you. My paperwork. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, great. And also the other question I have is, I have one building, the contractor scammed the owner. So this is— I don't know which department I should go.

It probably would be easier if you send me an email. I'll reach out to Commissioner Levine, and it's probably going to be DCWP. Because there's a project there in my district, they did half done, and the owner of the building gave $4 million to the contractors to finish the project. Yeah. It's half done. Yeah. So let me— And it's a building now, it's because it's— Yeah, because they haven't finished it.

Yeah.

All right. I now open the hearing for public testimony. I remind members of the public that this is a formal government proceeding and that decorum shall be observed at all times. As such, members of the public shall remain silent at all times. Like now. Okay. The witness table is reserved for people who wish to testify. No video recording or photography is allowed from the witness table.

Further, members of the public may not present audio or video recordings as testimony, but may submit transcripts of such recordings to the sergeant-at-arms for inclusion in the hearing record. If you wish to speak at today's hearing, please fill out an appearance card with the sergeant-at-arms and wait to be recognized. When recognized, you will have 2 minutes to speak on today's hearing topic of the administration's approach to construction safety.

If you have written statement— a written statement or additional written testimony you wish to submit for the record, Please provide a copy of that testimony to the sergeant-at-arms. You may also email written testimony to testimony@council.nyc.gov within 72 hours of this hearing. Audio and video recordings will not be accepted. The first panel— the second panel consists of Samuel Aluto from the Building Trades Employment Association, Rochelle Thompson, and Alex Lay.

And whoever is here can begin as soon as they are ready. Thank you. Alex Lay? Yeah. You can come up to the dais. Yep. And as soon as folks are ready, you can begin testifying.

Sorry about that. Good morning. I'm Samuel Luto, Director of Member Relations for the Building Trade Employers Association. Thank you, Chair Sanchez and Councilmember Juang, for being here and for holding this hearing. Our 24 associations represent more than 1,200 union contractors, and we have long worked with the DOB on safety, and we value the council's strong work on keeping New Yorkers and construction workers safe.

I'd just like to focus on the SST card verification discussion. With Local Law 196, the council made New York the first city in the nation to really streamline the safety training tracking for every construction worker. There's just a few operational problems I just wanted to flag on the SST card program. The only way to accept a— to check a card is to tap it with a phone while the worker stands there.

And so contractors can't really check workers who are dispatched the night before. It's very difficult to check the cards the day of because the daily checks don't work at scale, and liability falls on subcontractors who often don't really control the gate of the actual construction site. And so we urge the council to amend the law and work with the Department of Buildings to let employers check a card by its ID ahead of time and get back only if it's valid or if it's invalid, and also to define the due diligence of of who really controls the site and to be able to have a plan on how to check cards at scale when you have tens or hundreds of people on a construction site.

This can get very difficult. I just also want to flag a few things. I know that the mayor's block-by-block report, there's a lot of discussion about PVC pipes, plastic pipes. We think that the codes committee is a great place to do, you know, have these discussions with experts at. And we think that there really needs to be a substantive discussion that— and through the experts.

We also are concerned about the construction superintendent shortage that's coming up. And so there needs to be more routes and more ways to support the pipeline of future construction superintendents. And we'll submit more things into writing.

Thank you. Thank you. Really welcome your ideas on how to expand this construction superintendent pipeline. Um, and on, on the codes committee comments, I just want to say on the public record, I, as a council member, I am not a person to cut off any conversation, any public discussion. So if any— if plastic pipes is something that one setting wants to talk about, I am not— please stop calling me.

I'm not going to cut off conversation about any topic. You can voice your opposition there. You can voice it here. You can voice it anywhere. But please stop calling me to stop a conversation that, first of all, I'm not convening, and second of all, shouldn't be stopped because conversations need to happen so that we can get the best policies put forth.

Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Next.

Good morning, councilmen and administration. My name is Alex Lee. I'm here to talk about the construction safety. I'm deeply concerned about the community that I live in. I am a resident on 2001 86th Street. In my community, there's a developer, Sandhu Group, who's building a homeless shelter. I'm sorry, I can't hear you. At 86th and 2501 Street.

So since the initial application in 2022, there have been a lot of safety violations at this site, but most of them go unnoticed. Most importantly, on April 2025, asbestos inspection has claimed this site was free of asbestos. However, It start— DOB provided demolition permit. They start the demolition on March 2026. So the site was doing demolition. However, the site was found asbestos on site.

So clearly the contractor have no safety concern about the resident around this very dense residential area. So however, Since a lot of complaints to the department, finally a stop work order has been issued to this issue. But recently the contractor wanted to go back to start the demo work, but we have a judge to say due to the site was unsafe, so that permit was temporarily denied, the contractor going back for demolition work.

Thank you. Also, the area was considered a flood zone. And during the initial plan, they have to say this flood floor planning was consistent with the construction plan. So we are concerned. We are hoping that DOP and DEP pay attention to construction safety for the residents in this area. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Alex. Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning, Chair and members of the City Council. My name is Rochelle Thompson. I'm also known as the First Lady of Jazz in Harlem, USA, the continent that I love. I, I have lived in my rent-stabilized building for 41 years. I have stood at this microphone in past years telling you the exact same thing, and my previous testimonies are on your official record.

Please look them up. Now I am a senior citizen, and I'm here to urge this council to protect elders and seniors targeted by predatory landlords trying to force us out or to flip our buildings. First, we must end the crisis of legal representation. Seniors face court alone, systematically evicted by a simple $15 filing fee and a $5 certificate of mailing.

The stress dangerously spiked my sister's blood pressure, and I was forced to trek to the post office in a freezing blizzard on February 23rd just to mail my papers. Landlords are continuously allowed to relitigate the same exact issues, completely ignoring the Valid credit that I've had on my rent since 1992. Second, leases and income recertifications must renew automatically with mandatory building repair reports.

In the 41 years I've lived in my apartment, I have never seen one. Third, HPD must have the authority to immediately enter a building, unlock the basement, and fix tampered mixing valves on the spot. When the code enforcement inspector failed to write up the tampered valves and scaffolding, it was the HPD attorney who actually listened to the truth and typed my testimony in court.

I shouldn't have to run to the fire department just to get help opening the locked basement door. Finally, I want to expose Judge Leslie A. Granger. In HP court, the landlord had 3 high-priced attorneys stacked against me while I was entirely alone. Instead of addressing the open Class C violations, Judge Granger overstepped her authority and improperly tried to tie my repairs to a holdover case before a different judge.

She explicitly told me to file a new HP action, which I did on April 22nd, but when she tried to dismiss my case under the assumption that I had lacked Thank you. I told you directly I had the pictures ready. You may conclude. So what I'm saying, she signed a warrant for my eviction. I'm sorry, this is off topic, so I'm going to have to cut it off unless you're speaking about construction safety in particular.

Well, it's part of construction. Okay, but you're also over time. Oh, okay. Just change the laws and protect it. Okay. Thank you so much for speaking today. And just to clarify that I wasn't aiming my remarks at you, but the void that is all of the folks that are calling me. Thank you. Yeah, I was going to say, where are the employers association?

I mean, maybe on the union side, they're mobilizing. I wanted to clarify that too, that we're not telling people to call your office and talk about pipes. I'm glad we both then clarified. Thank you all so much, and thank you for your testimony. We hear you. It was a theme today about the work that is happening without licenses. in smaller worksites.

So thank you for coming and sharing your story today. So you will look up my past testimonies because this is the 4th time I've been here regarding this issue. Thank you. I think this is the first time I'm meeting you, but we will follow up. Thank you. Yes, you weren't there, but there were other council people. Sure, sure.

Thank you so much for testifying today. Thank you.

We will now turn to remote testimony. Once your name is called, a member of our staff will unmute you and the sergeant-at-arms will give you the go-ahead to begin. Please wait for the sergeant to announce that you may begin before delivering your testimony. Kyle Ems, you may begin when prompted. You may begin.

Hello. I am happy to be here testifying or giving my testimony. I'm here to urge Member Sanchez to please look into the largest tax exemption ever awarded for affordable housing preservation in New York's history. I've been seeking information diligently for 6 months now with no responses. Resolution 519 awarded my landlords $359 million for a Affordable housing, quote unquote, and the cost is impossible according to HPD's term sheet and the most recent tax values of the property.

It's impossible. I have several issues with this resolution, but the simplest is the cost. Why can't I get an explanation of this $359 million cost? I reached out to everybody's office, including Member Sanchez's, and just stonewalled. It's $359 million, the largest in New York's history. It spans from Washington Heights to South Brooklyn, which has never been done before in a single project.

All other projects are— they make sense geographically. This one was— I don't know, it spans 20 miles and 7 councilmember districts, which prevents oversight. I just— please give an answer. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Mr. Ems. I believe you're talking about an Article 11 submission. I know that we can follow up if you can share— no, you've followed up. You've emailed us a couple of times. It's on our radar to look into. But thank you for joining us today and look forward to getting back in touch with you.

Mr. Ems, I will— this is off topic. Your topic is off topic to our hearing topic today. That's a lot of topics. But I do want to refer you to the Land Use Committee and the Finance Committee, which are the ones that oversee Article 11 most closely. But we will also follow up. Thank you for your testimony.

If we have inadvertently missed anyone that has registered to testify today and has yet to be called, Please use the— excuse me. Please use the Zoom raise hand function if you are testifying remotely, and you will be called in the order that your hand has been raised. If you are testifying in person, please speak with one of the sergeant-at-arms.

All right. Seeing none, I will now close today's hearing. Thank you to the members of the administration and the members of the public who have joined us today. This hearing is adjourned. Thank you.