Audit Report on the Effectiveness of the Department of Buildings in Investigating Safety-Related Complaints in a Timely Manner

AUDIT REPORT IN BRIEF

This audit determined whether the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) responded to complaints within agency time guidelines. The audit also reviewed DOB’s follow-up efforts when violations are identified. DOB enforces the City building and electrical codes and is responsible for the approval, permitting, and inspection of construction work, plumbing, and elevators.

DOB generally responds to Priority A complaints within agency time guidelines. Based on our sample results, we project that DOB responded to 83 percent of the Priority A complaints within the agency’s 1.5-day standard in Fiscal Year 2002. However, DOB took an average of 9.5 days to respond to the sampled complaints, which was attributable to a reduction in inspection staff and the agency’s emergency efforts related to the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. For the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2003, DOB reported that it improved its timeliness, investigating 91 percent of complaints within the 1.5-day standard. (Our review of a sample of Fiscal Year 2003 complaints appears to support this assertion.) However, DOB responded to only 71 percent of the sampled 300 Priority B complaints within the agency’s 25-day standard. On average, DOB took almost 32 days to respond to the sampled complaints.

Regarding DOB’s follow-up efforts when violations are identified, however, we found that such efforts were minimal, if performed at all. We found no evidence that DOB followed up on any of the violations issued for complaints in our sample, including those violations for conditions deemed hazardous. Moreover, the agency did not comply with its procedures for following up on violations for hazardous conditions, and had no procedures for following up on other violations. As a result, DOB does not consistently ensure that reportable conditions are corrected or take punitive measures if they are not.

We made five recommendations to DOB. DOB should:

• Design and implement procedures whereby open ECB violations—especially those for hazardous conditions—are followed up, as required by DOB procedures.
• Require that supervisors periodically (e.g., monthly) review outstanding violations and ensure that DOB takes necessary steps to re-inspect or issue court summons.
• Modify BIS (Building Information System) so that new complaint orders are not generated for open violations, especially open violations that are in default.
• Take steps to increase the proportion of inspectors’ time spent in the field and reduce the proportion spent in the office performing administrative tasks.
• Remove obsolete procedures, such as DOB Directive #9, from its web site and agency procedural manuals.