Is the Buildings Department getting its act together?
In a Brooklyn Speech, the Commissioner Says the Agency Is Now Speedier and More Citizen-Friendly Without Cutting Corners on Safety
In terms of public esteem, New York City’s building inspectors are a far cry from, say, the firefighters. Their employer, the Department of Buildings (DOB), has been synonymous with sluggishness. In 2016, when city Comptroller Scott Stringer convened a Red Tape Commission and surveyed 300 local entrepreneurs about city agencies, the DOB came in at the bottom of the rankings, among the “least satisfying to engage.”
But Mayor de Blasio has promised to fix the agency–an especially urgent need in the midst of the city’s building boom. “What we need, and what we will have, is fundamental reform at the Department of Buildings,” he said in his 2015 State of the City speech. He pledged to put money into it: $120 million over four years, including the hiring of 320 new staffers. The previous year, the city got a new DOB commissioner, Rick Chandler, a civil engineer who had been managing about 10 million sq. ft. of facilities at Hunter College.
For Chandler, who had earlier headed borough-level offices for the DOB, it was a big step up in scope. New York City has about 1 million buildings and 85,000 elevators to inspect, along with boilers, building facades and other facilities, said Chandler. He spoke last week to members of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce gathered at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, where he made a case for the DOB beginning to emerge as a speedier, more efficient and more citizen-friendly agency.