NYC DOB Wraps First Wave of Construction Safety Sweeps After Partial Collapse in July

NYC buildings agency inspects 180 sites, no imminent hazards

Last month’s structural near-disaster at the former Pfizer headquarters being converted to apartments set off a sweeping inspection of construction sites across New York City. Inspectors checked at 180 sites in all, according to the Department of Buildings. Inspectors found violations, but “we did not find any hazardous structural issues posing an imminent danger to public safety,” DOB Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said in a social media post. The f…

NYC DOB wraps first wave of construction safety sweeps after partial collapse in July

After inspecting 180 jobsites, the agency found no immediate public safety concerns, nor evidence that the East 42nd Street failure was “inherent to office-to-residential conversion projects.”

Safety blitz finds lapses at 19 NYC jobsites by firms tied to near-collapse

City officials said the former Pfizer headquarters that was being converted into residential apartments is at risk of collapse. The Department of Buildings inspected 180 other worksites in the aftermath of the structural failure at a Midtown office-to-housing project. [ more › ]

NYC building failure triggered citywide inspection campaign

Inspectors expanded scrutiny across multiple office-to-residential projects after a high-profile beam failure, highlighting the challenges of converting aging buildings to housing.

The Built Environment Is Missing an Identity Layer

When two steel columns buckled on the 21st floor of the former Pfizer headquarters in Manhattan this July, the building safety industry watched a familiar sequence unfold. Investigators and engineers scrambled to reconstruct what had happened to the 37-story tower, then mid conversion from office space into more than 1,600 apartments. Reporting from industry news sources noted that engineers examining the failure were cautioned against assuming …