Archinect - News

An adaptive-reuse project in the Bronx has become New York's most notorious construction site

2022-06-07T09:00:00-04:00

This site, where an old building is being transformed into a charter school, has just distinguished itself from the 40,000 other major construction projects in New York City by having its third worker fatality in less than three years. No other construction site in New York City has had this many separate fatal incidents since at least 2003, when the Department of Buildings began keeping electronic records. But despite the pattern of deaths, the consequences have been negligible.

In full view of the Major Deegan Expressway, 20 Bruckner Boulevard, known throughout the New York area as the site of the iconic former History Channel (and later iHeartRadio) billboard, was once the ice storehouse of a former Yankees owner and is now being transformed into a charter school by developer Maddd Equities, who has had a scant $28,000 in fines levied against them in the past years despite the record-high fatalities.

Being a construction worker is one of the most lethal occupations in New York City, with rates of injury and death rising ahead of the pandemic before falling slightly owing to the economic downturn. Most of the men profiled in the Times are nonunion immigrant laborers working for $120-per-day to start, with some being recruited from homeless shelters to meet demands. An OSHA investigation revealed that some deaths were not properly reported for weeks.

Previously on Archinect: Nearly 1 in 4 workplace deaths in New York occur in construction

Multiple stop-work...

Why are so many construction workers dying in Texas?

2019-07-28T13:36:00-04:00

In 2017, the last year for which data are available, 183 people died in Texas in occupations relating to construction, installation, repair, maintenance and extraction, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s one every two days. This rate may underestimate the scale of the problem, as the deaths of workers without papers may not be reported to authorities.

A report from Global Construction Review delves into troubling data coming out of Texas, where official construction-related deaths number in the triple digits.

One potential reason for rising deaths in construction and related industries could lie in lax inspections.

According to Global Construction Review, the Occupational Heath and Safety Administration (OSHA) conducted only 40 crane inspections across all of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana over a nine month period starting in October 2018.

That record comes as the number of crane-related fatalities Texas exceeds those in all other states. 50 people died between 2011 and 2017 while operating cranes, according to the report, more than three times the number of deaths that occurred in the state with the next highest toll.

Nashville's booming construction sector also leads in workplace-related injuries, study shows

2018-09-17T18:32:00-04:00

The culture of fear and intimidation on construction sites has led to basic safety precautions being overlooked. Nashville is currently the most dangerous city in the south for construction workers, according to a report released in May 2017 by the Partnership for Working Families, Workers Defense Project and the University of Illinois at Chicago professor Nik Theodore, titled Build a Better South: Construction Working Conditions in the US South.

The Build a Better South: Construction Working Conditions in the US South study examined construction industry labor conditions across six key cities in the southern United States: Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Nashville.

"Among workers who had been injured during the past year, just 19% reported that workers’ compensation covered the medical bills for their injury," the study finds for Nashville which had the highest injury rate of all six surveyed southern cities. "An additional 38% said that their employer paid for at least part of the medical bills through some other mechanism, but 19% of injured workers paid for the medical bills out of their own pocket. The fact that fewer than one in five injured workers in Tennessee had their medical bills covered by workers’ compensation is troubling given the fact that all construction employers with one or more employees in the state are legally required to be covered by a workers’ compensation insurance policy."

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98-year-old I.M. Pei reportedly assaulted by caregiver

2016-01-04T12:24:00-05:00

A carer for the architect IM Pei [...] has been charged with assaulting the 98-year-old in his Manhattan townhouse. Eter Nikolaishvili, 28, was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of assaulting Pei early in December when he threatened to report her to the police for “doing something bad”, police said. [...] Pei was taken to hospital at 4am on the day of the alleged assault suffering from bleeding lacerations and bruising, after Nikolaishvili grabbed and twisted his arm, police said.

Pei Coob Freed-related news on Archinect:

Architect Robert Woo, paralyzed in Goldman Sachs construction mishap, walks with ‘exoskeleton’

2011-11-04T14:00:16-04:00

It’s like a body brace with a backpack and gizmos that resemble shotguns near the knees. A physical therapist operates a remote control that makes the patient step when their body is properly aligned.

Yale Student Dies in Machine Shop Accident

2011-04-14T15:07:31-04:00

Ms. Dufault, 22, was killed when her hair became caught in the lathe, whose rotating axis is used to hold materials like wood or metal being shaped.

As Aaron points out in the forum, please be safe in the shop!