One Year Later: A Look Back at the Aftermath of NYC’s Deadly Crane Accidents

On March 15, 2008, seven were killed after a crane collapsed in Midtown Manhattan. On May 30, two more were killed in a similar accident. The tragedies resulted in sweeping reforms and action taken by the city’s Buildings Department.

By Jack Buehrer and Tudor Van Hampton

A little over a year ago, the community was still mourning the loss of the seven people – including six construction workers – who were killed after a tower crane collapsed on March 15 at an East 51st Street site on which a high-rise condominium was being built.

An investigation into the accident was launched immediately and the city’s Department of Buildings, and specifically its then-chief, Patricia Lancaster, was criticized for approving the project at all, as it did not conform with city zoning regulations. Around that time, many inside and outside of the industry questioned whether New York’s unprecedented building boom was to blame for an increase in construction accidents throughout the city, and many public officials began to express their distrust of the Buildings Department. On April 22, the embattled Lancaster resigned.

And that was all before May 30 – the day of the second fatal crane accident which, this time, left two dead.

Another investigation was launched and, this time, the City Council became more involved, holding a series of hearings about construction safety and introduced several pieces of legislation relating specifically to crane operations. In September, the Buildings Department had a new chief in Robert LiMandri – Lancaster’s former deputy – and council had passed several tough new crane laws that required that a plan be filed with the city before any crane was erected, jumped or dismantled. Also, the new requirements called for all crane operators to complete 30 hours of training every three years.

“I think immediately after the two accidents we, as an industry, went through a very difficult couple of months of adjustment,” says Lou Colletti, president of the Building Trades Employers Association in New York City. “I think that’s a natural reaction to tragedies. But we needed to make sure whatever was adopted made sense. It was a very delicate balance. I think there were a lot of people at the time who were thinking the envelope was being pushed too far. But I think it was all heading in the right direction.”

The Buildings Department itself became more of a policing agency than it had ever been before, issuing more than 14,000 stop work orders in 2008 – a nearly 50 % increase from the previous year.

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“As accidents increased in 2008, we added more inspectors and more specialized teams,” says LiMandri. “We increased our enforcement to unprecedented levels.”

Then, after six months and nearly $4 million, New York City’s Dept. of Buildings on Feb. 3 recommended 41 measures to increase regulations for crane, concrete and excavation work. But industry observers say the standards, if implemented, would create more problems than they would solve.

The city assembled a team of more than 30 engineers, including experts from Skokie, Ill.-based forensic consultant CTL Group. The measures chiefly focus on crane and hoisting operations, as more than half of the line items fall under that category. At the top is a need “to track critical components of tower cranes,” a measure that area crane owners casually refer to as “Cranefax,” referring to a similar service for passenger cars.

Since taking over as DOB chief, Robert LiMandri has made safety his number one priority.

Coming less than a year after two fatal crane collapses killed nine people in Manhattan, the list is ambitious. “This all requires us to be an enforcer,” says Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri. “We expect some of [the recommendations] will be able to be up and running in three months. Others will take longer.”

One that could happen soon is a requirement for cranes entering the city to be examined by inspectors qualified under U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards. “All we care about is that the cranes that arrive here are as safe as possible and when they go up that they’re put together and inspected by the most qualified people,” says LiMandri. “And we’d like to have that check and balance in our own jurisdiction.”

The most-debated measure ― the so-called “Cranefax” project ― is a longer-term goal, he allows. The industry has kicked around the idea of such a system, similar to CARFAX, for years. LiMandri says it would require a constant dialogue between original-equipment manufacturers, crane owners and DOB. “We would be on notice that a part had been repaired to OEM standards and is safe to go back to work,” he says. “We want to close all the gaps, and we have to start somewhere.”

Rob Weiss, vice president of Cranes Inc., says that tracking crane parts, while a good idea, is not possible because they are not serialized and they freely move across state lines. “When the lifeblood of the construction industry relies on cranes outside of your jurisdiction, you can’t track them,” he says. “If they want to enforce something like Cranefax inside the jurisdiction of New York, that’ll be great, but it will create problems.”

Another moving target, LiMandri adds, is the establishment of safety requirements for older cranes. The study looked at such regulations around the globe. In Australia, cranes must be torn down and rebuilt after 10 years. In Singapore, the public is less trusting of the industry, as cranes must be junked after they are 15-20 years old. “Somewhere on that continuum there is the ability to have cranes that are older and are safe enough for use, but to also encourage newer cranes and technology,” LiMandri says.

Though industry insiders applaud LiMandri for the effort, they warn that NYC may supersede national standards, including a pending OSHA regulation for cranes and derricks whose pubic hearing is set in Washington, D.C., on March 17. NYC may go “far beyond what OSHA would require, and in some cases, you could argue that there is a conflict,” says Bill Shuzman, executive director of the local Allied Building Metal Industries. “But the bigger problem is that we have broad-brush recommendations, and the devil is going to be in the details.”

The May 30 crane collapse at a construction site on Manhattan's Upper East Side killed two construction workers and destroyed serveral units of an apartment building across the street. (Photo by Sue Pearsall)

Weiss gives DOB credit, though, for proposing to relax its requirement to “prototype” new models. “What New York City is contemplating is the concept of an approved vendor,” he says. “It’s still odd, because everything falls under the discretion of the Commissioner, but it could be a step in the right direction.”

Frank Bardonaro Jr., president of Bensalem, Pa.-based AmQuip and chairman of the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association’s tower crane committee, notes that a new Philedelphia rule he helped write is more comprehensive, for example, by requiring inspectors to be certified by a nationally-accredited agency and imposing higher insurance requirements for crane work. “For $3,999,990 less and a pot of coffee, [NYC] could have done what we did,” he says.

But Limandri says the study and the resulting recommendations was a necessary part of the process to both help ease public concerns as well as to lead the agency into a new direction as its role in the city continues to evolve.

“It’s going to take all of us to raise the standards across the industry,” he says. “We’ve shown over the last year we can move the industry if they need assistance. We need to have people on the ground who are knowledgeable. We need to be clear in our tasks and make it clear in advance what we want to see. I think in many ways we’ve seen significant change.”