Dive Brief:
- The New York City Department of Buildings announced today it has issued 100,000 Site Safety Training cards to date, a milestone that indicates the training requirement, mandated through local legislation passed in 2017, has buy-in from the building community.
- Building department officials said that the safety training has contributed to a more than 20% decrease in jobsite injuries, the first such reduction in injuries in nearly a decade.
- Officials also announced that DOB has started taking applications for its Construction Site Safety Reimbursement Program, a one-time grant to help offset the cost of training for construction companies with up to 15 employees.
Dive Insight:
The DOB said that since the city enacted Local Law 196, it has been sending building officials to jobsites and informing workers and construction employers about the training requirements, deadlines and where they can sign up for both in-person and online courses.
As part of the law:
- Construction workers on large and complex projects must obtain an SST card by completing at least 40 hours of OSHA- and DOB-approved safety training.
- DOB-licensed site safety professionals must have 62 hours of safety training, and construction and demolition workers on the city's approximately 5,300 covered construction sites are required to have 30 hours of safety training.
- Construction workers on covered jobsites must complete 40 hours of safety training and obtain their SST cards by March 1, the final compliance deadline.
The DOB also extended the deadline for training back in 2019 when it was clear that there were not enough providers to meet demand.
Late last year, The New York Times reported that the DOB has been conducting surprise inspections — more than 20,000 — at about 25% of all active New York City jobsites, in part to enforce and inform workers about interim training requirements but also to address dangerous working conditions. From September 2018 to mid-November 2019, a team of 38 inspectors fined violators $15 million and issued more than 2.500 stop work orders.
