The New York City Department of Buildings has shut down 322 construction sites across the city due to hazardous conditions in June 2021. 

The DOB issued full and partial stop-work orders to the affected sites, citing more than 1,129 violations for safety and non-compliance issues. In total, the DOB has carried out safety inspections at more than 2,100 of New York’s larger and more complex construction sites. These orders are part of new “zero tolerance” safety sweeps initiated on June 1, 2021 by DOB Commissioner Melanie E. La Rocca, in response to a number of construction deaths that occurred earlier this year. Depending on the severity of safety infringements, inspectors issued enforcement actions or completely shut down sites. 

In addition, the DOB released a new building construction safety report early last week, that outlines construction safety trends in New York in 2019 and 2020 and examines department initiatives that led to declines in construction-related incidents and injuries during that time. According to the report, in 2019, the DOB reported 595 injuries and 12 deaths, compared to 502 injuries and eight deaths in 2020. This decline in construction-related incidents was the first such decrease in nearly ten years. 

In the report, the DOB claims this decline “coincided with a significant increase in the number of violations and related enforcement actions that were issued by the Department of Buildings in 2019 compared to the preceding year.”

The report also offers a first-of-its-kind analysis of onsite conditions that led to fatal or near-fatal outcomes, with details on factors that contributed to these incidents. 

"Construction deaths are not acceptable,” said Council Member and Chair of the Committee on Housing and Buildings Robert E. Cornegy, Jr. “In order to prevent avoidable fatalities, we need better information about construction sites and we need to learn from our mistakes that put workers at risk. This new report does just that." 

The DOB’s “zero tolerance” safety sweeps are ongoing, so the number of sites to shut down could continue to rise.