NYC orders independent engineering review after Midtown tower column failure

The Department of Buildings instructed the owners of the former Pfizer headquarters on East 42nd Street to hire an independent engineering firm to assess the structural plans after two steel columns on the 21st floor bent, prompting a mass evacuation on July 7. The building, a 37-story conversion adding 14 new or expanded floors to a 66-year-old structure, did not require a peer review under current code because it falls below the 1 million-square-foot or 600-foot thresholds.

"Following the structural failure, we have ordered the property owners to contract the services of a third-party engineering firm (separate from their project team) to do their own independent review of all work at the site, and to conduct a forensic analysis of what went wrong," Department of Buildings spokesperson Andrew Rudansky said in an email.

Experts said a peer review would have been prudent for an older building with limited documentation and a substantial vertical expansion. "It is a very good idea, especially for these older buildings," said Georgi Petrov, an architect and engineer with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. "There isn’t always very good documentation of what the existing building is and they were designed under different codes with different engineering philosophies than what are designed today."

Construction-accident attorney Jay Nelson Gorayeb suggested lowering the size trigger for mandatory reviews, calling it "a low-hanging fruit" for legislators. Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg indicated the city is examining possible policy changes, while Councilmember Pierina Sanchez said she is reviewing the criteria that trigger additional structural review.

The project, led by MetroLoft and David Werner Real Estate, added four stories to the original 33-story tower and expanded ten floors above the compromised columns. MetroLoft spokesperson Julia Bergman said the company is cooperating with the department and focusing on site safety and repairs.

Industry observers noted that peer reviews typically cost $100,000-$200,000, a modest amount relative to multimillion-dollar developments, and can catch calculation errors or omitted reinforcement. However, some engineers cautioned that the cause of the failure may involve construction practices rather than design flaws, making it premature to conclude that a mandatory review would have prevented the incident.