Thousands of people walk the streets of NYC and its surrounding boroughs. The one thing they don't know is, there are over 1,400 building facade that is unsafe for pedestrians to walk under.
According to the NYT
"Across the city, about 1,400 buildings are wrapped in wood-and-steel sidewalk sheds, not for construction, but because their facades are a serious safety threat. The sites have major structural problems, including corroded masonry and fractured terra cotta, which could come loose and hurt or kill people on the ground".
This is a scary thing. Could you imagine walking by a building and seeing a brick fall in front of you or worst hit you? NYT's reported that over the past decade, landlords have ignored more than $31 million in fines over unsafe facades. Buildings have been slow-walked or not started at all. During that period, more than 6,000 buildings higher than six floors did not inspect their facades or failed to file their findings, as required by law.
One building was reported o the city in 2011 that its facade was safe, even though the site was never inspected. Four years later a 2-year-old girl was killed by falling terra cotta from the building.
Despite landlord and building owners ignoring or avoiding to pay the fines, NYC has updated there facade rules effective February 20, 2020, which state
"To keep buildings safe, owners of properties higher than six stories must have exterior walls and appurtenances inspected every five (5) years – and they must file a technical façade report with the Department.
Property owners must repair dangerous conditions within 90 days of filing a technical report. Once the work is finished, owners must file an amended report within two weeks.
Submit façade compliance filings and report unsafe façade activity
Make payments
View and search information related to your façade filings
Upload documents
View the status of a façade filing
Receive emails at milestones throughout the filing process"
With so many buildings here in NY, inspecting every building every five years with human bodies and scaffoldings could become time-consuming and cost a lot of money. Here is my favorite part lol. Drones can help reduce cost, liability and time.
How does drone help reduce costs?
Using so many types of equipment just to inspect a building cost thousands, you have to pay insurance for the bodies inspecting it and more. Hiring Skylife Aerial Imaging or any drone provider will cost you half or even a fraction of the cost because using a drone is quicker, cheaper insurance, and no human needs to climb.
How does drone help reduce liability?
Equipment can break, humans can fall off, injuries can happen. Using a drone you reduce these potential hazards by flying a drone having it take pictures and no risk of anybody falling. The only potential hazard to worry about it the drone falling and even that isn't so bad because as the drone operator the area being flown needs to be closed off and no one is to walk under the areas being flown.
How does using a drone save time?
Inspecting facades can be time-consuming, from setting up the equipment to climbing up and down the sides of the building and finally taking everything apart. This process can take weeks just to inspect one building. Now imagine have a portfolio of buildings now you have to hire several companies to have the buildings done at the same time or around the same time. Hiring Skylife Aerial Imaging using drone technology you can inspect 3-4 buildings in a day the only time-consuming part is the processing of the images taken. Imagine how fast you can be in compliance with this new NYC rule?
What does Skylife Aerial Imaging offer?
We can take high-quality images of the facades of your building, inspect your roofs and on top of that we can create a 3D image of your building to give you a live kind of feel of your building and take a look at the facade of your building while in the comforts of your office with or without your constituents.