By Julie Shapiro
Tishman Construction Corporation proposed a dozen new safety measures for the construction of the Goldman Sachs headquarters, after a piece of steel fell off the site and landed in the Battery Park City ballfields 10 days ago.
Work has been stopped on the construction site since the accident, partly because the Department of Buildings commanded Tishman and Goldman to meet with the community before work could continue. That meeting took place Wednesday night.
“We share the deep concern [of the community],” Jeffrey Schroeder, managing director of Goldman Sachs, told 40 parents and members of Community Board 1. “Safety is our top priority, period.”
Goldman has instructed Tishman not to seek variances to do weekend work for the remaining four weeks of the Downtown Little League season. The accident occurred during a Saturday afternoon Little League game, when Tishman was working under a variance but was doing work forbidden by the variance.
John Livingston, president of Tishman Construction, would not commit to avoiding weekend and late-afternoon work once the Little League season is over. Manhattan Youth uses the fields for its summer day camp and the Downtown Soccer League uses them in the fall.
“We think this building is very, very safe,” Livingston said. “The faster we can get it enclosed, the safer it will be for everybody.”
Livingston explained how the accident happened and what Tishman is doing to make sure it does not happen again.
Tishman is installing full-height vertical netting on all unenclosed floors of the building. The floors already had the 60 inches of vertical netting required by the Department of Buildings, but Tishman is adding additional netting to close the gap between the existing netting and the next floor. The new netting is installed up to the 35th floor so far. Tishman will also enclose the hoists and exterior welding platforms in netting.
The steel plate that landed in the outfield of a Downtown Little League game tumbled from a hoist, an elevator used to move building materials. The plate, 30 by 30 inches and weighing 60 pounds, was not secured to the hoist. From now on, the plates will be placed in a holster and attached to the hoist with a cable.
Tishman fired the worker who was operating the hoist at the time of the accident, but Livingston acknowledged that the operator followed the approved protocol. He placed the steel plate in the center of the hoist, but the vibrations of the hoist, combined with the wind, shifted the plate beneath the door. The plate bumped into the side of the building, jarring the door open. The wind then blew the plate across Murray St. and onto the ballfield.
Under the new procedure announced Wednesday, plates will have to be secured to the hoist.
Because wind played a role in the accident, Tishman is reexamining the way workers track and respond to wind. The cranes at the building are fitted with anemometers, which measure wind speed, and Tishman automatically halts crane work when the wind gusts to 30 miles per hour. Now, Tishman will install anemometers on the building itself, so once the cranes are gone — by next Labor Day, Livingston said — the contractor will still be able to measure wind speed. Tishman will hire a wind consultant to determine which operations must stop when wind reaches certain levels.
On the day of the accident, wind was blowing at 35 to 40 miles per hour at the site, Livingston said.
After the accident, Tishman appointed two new full-time safety managers who will focus solely on the Goldman site. Tishman will hire another person to monitor safety and report directly to the Battery Park City Authority and the Department of Buildings. Tishman also hired new workers whose sole job is to keep the site clean. All workers will receive a refresher safety course.
In addition, Tishman is adding another safeguard to ensure that nothing else falls off the building: All materials and equipment must be stored at least 15 feet from the perimeter of the building. New York City’s construction code requires only 10 feet of buffer space. Tishman is painting a 15-foot line in bright orange on every exposed floor.
Mark Costello, president of Downtown Little League, was glad to see Tishman and Goldman officials attend a meeting, but said that gestures are not the same as substance, and this is just the beginning of the work needed to make the building safe. He thinks Tishman should not continue seeking variances for after-hours work.
A debate emerged among the parents over whether the field would ever be safe for kids while there is construction next-door. Work has just begun on the towers Milstein Properties is building adjacent to the ballfields, so high-rise construction will continue to overshadow the fields for at least the next several years.
“You are going to have accidents and they’re going to happen on a regular basis,” said Tom Goodkind, C.B. 1 member. “Are we willing to take that risk with our children?”
Goodkind said he will not allow his children to play on the ballfields, and he wants to see Goldman and Tishman provide a bus to move kids to another field in the city instead.
But Mariama James, another parent and C.B. 1 member, said the Goldman accident wasn’t just a random occurrence — it happened because of carelessness and poor site safety, which the city and Tishman are addressing. In the wake of 9/11, James does not want to keep her kids from the ballfields and take another piece of the city away from them.
“Kids are always being told this is over, you lost this, you can’t do this,” James said. “I’ve really had it with that.”
Much of the audience applauded.
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
