Shamash explains proactive inspection team methods and referrals

I just want to highlight that these are very specific inspections that are being done by that team, right?

So this is a subset of the total number of inspections and the total number of violations issued by the department as a whole.

The violations...

I'm sorry, the inspections that are done by this team are completely proactive, so 100% proactive as compared to the 33% that we were quoting before.

What we are finding with our proactive inspection team, and that's a team that goes out and looks at potentially buildings adjacent to construction sites,

we are finding that in review of the drawings for those construction sites and the inspections of the buildings next door, we're identifying high-risk buildings

and ensuring that the construction site next door is not impacting those high-risk adjacent buildings.

With our heightened enforcement team, that team is specifically looking at owners, licensees, registered design professionals, and licensees could include

electricians, plumbers, construction supers, site safety managers.

runs the whole gamut of our licensees, and they're specifically looking at those entities and potentially who those entities are also working with and inspecting that spider web

that...

Those connections make and looking at all those buildings that those entities are involved with.

So the proactive inspection team is definitely finding a higher rate of violations based on that.

Again, the proactive inspection team is putting together a lot of good work using predictive analytics, but all of that trickles down to heightened enforcement.

And when I say heightened enforcement, and that is...

Sharing the results of all the sweeps that we do with our attorneys at the Department of Buildings, whether that is our licensing disciplinary unit or our borough enforcement team.

Those teams are processing criminal court, nuisance abatement cases against owners, against licensees.

So that is the full circle of the work that the proactive enforcement team is doing.

I would say that the main thing here is when we are doing complaint-driven responses, we are normally

Maybe working with one site, individual small lot, a large complex series of lots together.

What we see here in Proactive is that we may be dealing with multi-building, multi-jurisdictional issues.

We've recently met with most of the DA offices about the work that we need to collaborate on and do further and finding that

there is a synergy between the proactive work that we're doing, potentially exploring further areas like false filings and bringing these cases with their worker protection or their construction safety units.

And now proactive enforcement, the work that we work with the council, it gives us tools to come to the DAs with information, come to the harassment task force with information that we didn't have before.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Thank you.

It's really heartening to hear that it is making a difference.

1,400 violations issued means that there were 1,400 problems out there.

And then it's really helpful to hear that it's leading to...

14,000.

14,000.

Holy moly.

All right.

That's even more impressive.

No, that's really heartening.

And, you know, that was an effort, that local law was an effort that we really worked on together, the agency and the council.

And so just, you know, invite us to continue to do just that in the task forces that we're going to be working on together.

So thank you.

14,000 at 13,000 unique sites.

Large numbers.

Wow.

Thank you.

Thank you for the work to all of the members working at DOB.