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Industry Forms New Construction Safety Group
By Diane Greer
Responding to a recent rash of construction-related accidents, a group of industry leaders have announced the formation of a new privately funded organization dedicated to promoting safety on New York City jobsites.
The New York City Construction Industry Safety Council will provide a forum for industry members to share safety ideas and best practices and to conduct research on how to implement those practices in the City.
“The private sector needs to get involved with this on an ongoing basis,” said Louis Coletti, president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers’ Association, one of the creators of the CISC. “This is not a one-shot deal but something that we are committed to over the long run.”
The organization’s sixteen founding members comprise the City’s top high-rise construction managers, their contractor associations, the Building and Construction Trades Council of New York and the Real Estate Board of New York. Plans call for expanding the group’s membership to architects, engineers, academics, contractors and government representatives.
“Development cannot take place at the expense of public safety, and it’s going to take the industry’s cooperation to make construction sites safer,” LiMandri said in a written statement. “The formation of the NYC Construction Industry Safety Council is a step toward that end, and I look forward to real results that raise the safety standards on job sites.”
In the wake of recent construction accidents, including two crane collapses on Manhattan’s eastside that killed nine people, the City Council and the Department of Buildings are proposing a raft of new legislation and rules to improve construction safety. One proposed rule would require owners and users of tower cranes to maintain tower cranes inspection, repair and maintenance records.
One of CICS’s first projects is to explore the development of a database, akin to the CARFAX Vehicle History Reports, to document and review the maintenance records of tower cranes. Preliminary discussions are underway with two consultants, McGraw-Hill Construction (which owns New York Construction magazine) and Advanced Management Systems, to develop the new system.
Coletti has had preliminary discussions about the proposed system with Robert LiMandri, the City’s acting building commissioner. “The project is intended to compliment what DOB, OSHA and other city and government agencies or doing,” Coletti says. “This is going to be a collaborative effort.”
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