City Is Moving To Modernize Construction Site Inspection Process
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Almost a year after a fire at the former Deutsche Bank building killed two firemen, the Bloomberg administration is modernizing the communication system used by city agencies charged with inspecting construction sites.
In an effort to better integrate information collected during inspections conducted by the Fire Department, the Department of Buildings, and the Department of Environmental Protection, the city is investing $5.5 million in an IBM computer system that will create a single, comprehensive database eventually containing inspection information about every building in the city.
According to city officials, the Business Intelligence System will improve each agency’s ability to get access to previous reports, and eventually will eliminate the paper-based database.
“It isn’t that people aren’t willing to cooperate,” Mayor Bloomberg said at City Hall yesterday. “It’s getting them together that has been the problem.”
Previously, there was no set communication system for the three agencies to use regarding construction site inspections. For example, the Fire Department would select buildings for fire code inspection based on whether it looked like they were under construction or about to be demolished, a practice city officials called “nonsensical.”
In a given year, the Fire Department conducts more than 250,000 inspections, the buildings department conducts more than 40,000, and the environmental protection department conducts more than 5,000, according to city officials. The demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty St. in Lower Manhattan is far behind schedule partially because of the litany of inspections it must go through.
The shared computer database was one of 33 recommendations to reduce risk at construction sites put forward in a report by a committee formed in the aftermath of the deadly blaze last August, which investigators blamed on a disabled standpipe that had gone unnoticed in prior inspections.
The report also called for more extensive training for each agency’s inspectors and additional city oversight and permit requirements for building owners.
