New York City is in the final-review stage of a revision to the 2008 rules that require the accreditation of special inspection agencies. The requirement for special inspections by qualified and certified inspectors went into effect, but there has been a delay in implementing the requirement for special inspection agencies to become accredited. The new rule will allow for a more gradual phase-in of the requirement for accreditation with the creation of three classes of projects and an initial requirement that only the largest projects will require inspections by accredited special inspection agencies.

In the original rule there was a "small building exemption" that would have allowed qualified Professional Engineers or Registered Architects to perform special inspections without becoming accredited special inspection agencies. The new rule expands this exemption in the form of a "small projects" exemption that is tied to the gross area of a project instead of the size of the building. Generally, projects that affect less than 10,000 square feet would be exempt from the requirement for inspections by accredited agencies.

An intermediate class of projects, where the square footage affected is less than 20,000 square feet, would be exempt from the requirement for accreditation initially. It is anticipated that the requirement for inspections by accredited agencies will be extended to this second class of projects in the near future, after the firms performing the largest projects achieve accreditation.

IAS has currently accredited 21 New York region based Special Inspection Agencies and we are presently working with another 40 applicants. The interest in accreditation is growing in New York as the construction community prepares for the implementation of this rule. Larry O'Connor, New York Representative and Akshay Mishra, Eastern Operations Program Manager are the nucleus of IAS's New York-centric team that is addressing this growing need.