IABS hears commissioner's view of buildings revolution.

Calling her multi-year overhaul of the Buildings Department a "revolution," NYC Building's Commissioner Patricia Lancaster, AIA met with the Irish American Building Society (IABS) recently at its Fall meeting.

First announcing that crime continued to decrease another 5% and residential property values continued to rise by 15%, she also said that the construction industry--now at $16 billion annually--is employing approximately 30,000 workers, and with another $36 billion on the drawing board for the next decade, "the prognosis is good."

Most of the Commissioner's time has been taken up with Herculean task simply defined by Mayor Bloomberg as "fix the department", which has involved a comprehensive "renovation" including everything from revolutionizing the way personnel think, file and provide information, to a massive computerization of all functions, from prefiling to finalizing the C of O process. She has also decentralized where necessary, and even tackled human resources issues such as providing sales training for those dealing with the public.

Working towards the goal of making the department more "transparent" with information available online for all involved, she also has had to deal with inherited corruption issues within the department, and alongside working on multiple procedural changes to eliminate opportunities for corruption, issued the department's first code of conduct.

With an agenda that is bringing the department into the 21st Century, she is also working with industry groups to bring the very codes that govern NYC's buildings into congruence with the rest of the international building community. With what she called a "dream team" of industry professionals examining every aspect of the IBC, and recommending the New York-specific customizations, she hopes to have the revised code ready on January 1, 2006.