Patricia Lancaster

The city will conduct an “intensive, in-depth assessment” of high-risk construction in the city, the Department of Buildings announced Wednesday, one day after commissioner Patricia Lancaster resigned.

"This year, we have seen an increase in accidents and injuries related to high-risk construction activities," acting commissioner Robert LiMandri said in a statement, "and we must make sure that as construction activity in the City continues to increase, the Department’s ability to hold the construction industry to higher safety standards keeps pace."

The department will spend $4 million to bring in outside engineers and others to oversee the review.

Full release after the jump.  read more »

So, there have been calls for Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster's resignation since the crane collapse last month. It finally happened today, and Assemblyman Jonathan Bing thinks that's because there is an assembly hearing on the subject this Thursday.

"I was going to delve very deeply into the issue of why a building was built that caused the crane collapse, without proper permits,” Bing says.  read more »

The city’s commissioner of the Department of Buildings, Patricia Lancaster, today resigned from her post, more than five weeks after a major Upper East Side crane collapse killed seven people.

Ms. Lancaster, credited with overhauling and cleaning up a department noted for corruption, led numerous efforts to modernize the regulatory agency and increase penalties for developers as the amount of construction in the city soared.

But in the end, the building boom proved to be her undoing, as a number of high-profile deaths at construction sites in recent months brought on piles of public attention and numerous calls by lawmakers for her resignation.

Garnering the most attention was the crane collapse on East 51st Street, and last week, Ms. Lancaster acknowledged that the building of that size should never have been approved in the first place for that site.  read more »

City Councilman Jimmy Oddo, who has been critical of the city's Department of Buildings for years, said that getting rid of the commissioner, as Michael Bloomberg just did, should just be the beginning.

“You can replace [Commissioner] Patricia Lancaster with the most talented person in the world, and if you don’t provide this department with resources to put boots on the ground, you’ll have the same results for the last couple of years,” Oddo said.  read more »

Patricia Lancaster is out as the commissioner for the city's Department of Buildings.

Michael Bloomberg announced her departure in a statement just now.

From Bloomberg:  read more »

The city found safety violations on six tower cranes (large cranes attached to buildings), after searching all 29 tower cranes in use citywide, the Department of Buildings announced today. The six cranes, with another two registering administrative violations, were temporarily shut down until the errors were corrected.

Following last month’s fatal crane accident on East 51st Street, DOB did a sweep of all the tower cranes in the city, and is now looking at mobile cranes, of which there are 220.  read more »

State Senator Liz Krueger wants the city’s commissioner at the Department of Buildings fired, following the deadly crane accident last week.

Krueger, who represents the Upper East Side, said in a public statement just now, “The problems at the DOB are systemic, and exist from top to bottom. The first step that must be taken now is for DOB Commissioner Patricia Lancaster to step down.”

The Buildings Department inspector who admitted to falsifying documents that said he had inspected the crane was arrested yesterday.

Here is the full statement from Krueger:  read more »

An inspector from the Department of Buildings was arrested today following last weekend’s fatal crane collapse for falsifying an inspection, though city officials said his actions likely did not lead to the accident.

Edward Marquette was charged with falsifying business records, a felony, after he admitted he lied on paperwork and did not make a March 4 inspection of the crane, according to the city. However, the crane was inspected after March 4, including the day before the March 15 collapse, and in a statement, Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster said “it is unlikely that a March 4 inspection would have prevented this horrific accident.”  read more »

A seventh body was recovered at the site of Saturday's crane collapse, the AP reported this afternoon.

All of the casualties from the 19-story crane's collapse on Saturday were construction workers at the site, except for one woman visiting a friend in a nearby townhouse to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.  read more »

Patricia Lancaster, commissioner of the city’s Department of Buildings, is seeking to tighten the leash a bit on builders, pushing for new legislation for “increased enforcement tools” in coming weeks.

The department says it is increasing staff dedicated to inspecting sites and plans, increasing the cost of violating “stop work” orders, and beefing up inspections of sidewalk sheds.

Also of note, the department wants to put the architectural plans of new buildings online by 2009, allowing anyone and everyone to see what’s in store when a developer applies for a building permit.  read more »

The city is testing the waters for a new look to the boxy, dull-colored sidewalk scaffolding sheds that fill the streets of Manhattan. Currently, about 4,500 of these aesthetic gems are set up in the city.

Patricia Lancaster, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Buildings, today announced a series of scaffold measures including the planned test of a prototype design of a sidewalk shed—one built “to improve pedestrian safety, increase natural light on the sidewalk, and improve the streetscape around construction sites,” according a press release.

Ms. Lancaster also announced a 30-day crackdown on unsafe scaffolding, a move that comes after the unsteady scaffold-related death of a worker at a Brooklyn construction site last month.  read more »

Testifying before the City Council earlier today, Department of Buildings commissioner Patricia Lancaster called for new regulations on general contractors and concrete contractors, responding to the cacophony of criticism that followed a fatal accident at the Trump SoHo.

Her recommendations include making general contractors and concrete contractors register with the city in order to do business in the five boroughs, and requiring that concrete contracts have a safety manager for high-rise construction, according to prepared testimony.

Also of note: 2007 saw 12 fatalities and 128 injuries on construction sites, compared with 18 fatalities and 116 injuries in 2006.  read more »

In May of this year, city Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster told The Observer's Matthew Schuerman that she wouldn't be satisfied until there were no more construction-related deaths in New York City.

Well, I would say if one person dies, it’s too many. We have been more proactive than in the history of the agency in my administration, but we will continue until the deaths are down to zero.

The agency's getting there. The Buildings Department this morning released its annual safety report card, and it showed a 43 percent drop in construction-related deaths--from 14 the year before to eight in 2007 through Oct. 31. At the same time, however, the number of construction-related injuries stayed constant--105 vs. 104 this year.

High-rise construction has been much more dangerous for construction workers than low-rise, according to the report card. Accidents on high-rise construction sites increased this year from 23 to 42. On low-rise sites, they decreased, from 66 to 51.