This week the Third & Bond bloggers get some tough news…

One of our New Year’s Resoutions for 2010 was to be more patient: whether it’s walking behind slow people on the sidewalk or sighing loudly behind slow people in line, we are going to try and chill out a little. What’s another 30 seconds here or there? Well our Resolution has already undergone a severe test beginning Monday, January 4, when we returned from vacation to find out Third & Bond has a Stop Work Order (SWO) currently in effect.

In the good ol’ days, SWO’s were handed out as the severe penalties they’re intended to be—primarily when there were material safety concerns on the jobsite. It’s a severe penalty since all work on the job has to cease: workers don’t have a job to go to and don’t get paid and owners sit around enduring painful delays.

Starting 3-4 years ago, particularly after the crane accidents around town, the Department of Buildings (DOB) starting handing out SWO’s like Halloween candy for the smallest of infractions or paperwork inconsistencies. It’s not so different than the photos of grandmothers being frisked at airports as a result of the Christmas bomber.

In the case of Third & Bond, there’s an important piece of paperwork called the TR-1 which is submitted to DOB in order to get a building permit. It identifies who is the responsible party to inspect each part of the project’s construction: the foundation, brick, fire alarm, etc. When the project is initially designed, and it’s not yet clear who the inspector is going to be, we identify the architects and engineers from the project to be the responsible party. As the construction starts, there’s a commonly-used process to substitute new inspectors in lieu of the architets and engineers. It should be a fairly simple process: submit paperwork that withdraws the initial inspector and at the same time submit paperwork that identifies the new inspector. We did this….in October 2008.That’s right, 15 months ago.

What’s happened since is an old, often familiar, DOB storyline. They scanned in the paperwork withdrawing the inspectors but lost the paperwork inserting the new inspectors. For those architects, expeditors and owners reading this blog, can you imagine such a thing, DOB losing paperwork? It happens on every job many times.

We returned….in November 2009 with new paperwork to scan when we realized the paperwork wasn’t shown in the system. No results. We returned in December 2009 with new paperwork to scan when we realized the paperwork wasn’t shown in the system. On December 28, a representative from DOB showed up at our jobsite and issued an SWO.

A stop work order is a curious penalty, that hasn’t since been explained to us, since there’s no concern about the safety of construction personnel or neighboring properties.

We’ve been trying to resolve the situation ever since. Eight business days and counting. Once an SWO has been issued, it’s always more complicated to have it removed. So we wait, no work proceeds, and our New Year’s Resolution becomes more at risk with each passing day.

Inside Third & Bond: Weeks 1-110 [Brownstoner]
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