AEC News You Can Use Blog

The Waldorf Astoria’s much-delayed $2 billion overhaul was hit with a full stop-work order after a 45 year-old construction worker plummeted to his death on Thursday, Jan. 2.

Policed identified the victim as Elie William by Jan. 6. He fell through a hole in a suspended ceiling on the swanky Park Ave. hotel’s sixth floor shortly before 10 a.m., before landing 40 ft. below in a third floor ballroom. He was reportedly helping an electrician at the time, and was pronounced dead at the scene by EMS.

The luxury hotel is in the midst of a $2 billion top-to-bottom revamp. It shut down in 2017 after planning to add 375 condos for long-term residents, and was originally scheduled to reopen its doors to patrons in 2020, but COVID and other construction delays pushed the opening back to this spring.

Suffolk Construction Corporation is the project’s general contractor, while the while Pierre-Yves Rochon is in charge of the revamped interiors. The 625-foot-tall Art Deco landmark occupies a full city block bound by Park Avenue to the west, East 49th Street to the south, East 50th Street to the north, and Lexington Avenue to the east.

Under the stop work order, the DOB is demanding that safety conditions for construction workers be improved before the order will be lifted.

”Failure to safeguard and maintain safety measure led to the cause of the incident, DOB violation was issued Stop all construction work entire jobsite, provide safety measures for operations going forward,” the order notes.

It’s the second fatal construction accident on the East Side of Manhattan in less than a month. Queens resident Jose Ramirez Munoz, another 45 year-old construction worker, was killed on Dec. 13 while working on the demolition of the Community Church of New York–and its affiliated residential brownstones–on E. 35th St., between Madison and Lexington Avenues.

In that incident, a cherry picker that he was riding on hoisted him 32 ft. above the ground, bashing him..Read More

A construction worker died after a portion of a crane fell onto the Southeast 3rd Avenue bridge Thursday in downtown Fort Lauderdale, crushing a car and injuring three more people.

The incident happened at around 4:30 p.m. on the bridge over the New River, near Southeast 4th Street.

Fort Lauderdale fire officials said in a news conference said a construction crew was in the process of "stepping the crane" by adding sections to a crane to make it taller when a platform fell from the building, along with pieces of the crane.

The construction worker fell with the crane section, causing fatal injuries, officials said. The crane itself remained secured to the building.

The crane section landed on the nearby bridge, damaging at least two vehicles. At least two other people who were in vehicles were transported to the hospital, one in stable condition and the other with minor injuries. A third person was also treated for their injuries at the scene.

Footage from Chopper 6 showed the crushed vehicle as well as another damaged car nearby. Several police units and paramedics responded to the scene.

Mark Cerezin's Tesla was damaged by the falling crane piece. He said it bounced off his car and landed on the vehicle next to him.

"I was driving and I felt a compression, and I looked up and I saw the blue structure coming down, and I slammed on my brakes. It sheared off the front of my Tesla and all the airbags went off — and I’m very lucky to be alive," Cerezin said.

One woman who lives in an apartment across from where the collapse happened said she saw the crane falling from the sky and hit the corner of a building. She described the screams she heard from construction workers as "unsettling."

"It was really shocking," said the woman.. Read More & See Videos

Two New York City construction bosses accused of recklessly using a crane that toppled over in a near-fatal accident at a Manhattan job site were acquitted by a Manhattan Supreme Court judge Thursday.

Timothy Braico, 46, and Terrence Edwards, 44, dodged second-degree assault and reckless endangerment charges in the eight-month long trial for the June 25, 2018 crane collapse at a luxury residential building in Harlem.

The case was argued at a non-jury trial before Judge Maxwell Wiley after nearly five years of pretrial litigation that followed the pair’s November 2018 indictment by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

“We are grateful that justice was done and wish that Mr. Braico didn’t have to wait five years to be vindicated,” Dan Horwitz, Braico’s defense attorney, said in a statement.

Prosecutors argued that Braico, a senior branch manager, rented a Jekko mini crane without ensuring that it was properly set up, while having untrained workers use the equipment.

Edwards, a site supervisor, had allegedly instructed an untrained worker to use the crane — causing it to topple over, sending a heavy glass panel crashing to the ground on the day of the incident, prosecutors have said.

Dramatic video of the crash showed the boom strike two ironworkers on the third floor of the construction site on East 126th Street.

One of the workers suffered severe head trauma and the other’s mobility was impaired due to his injuries.

Defense attorneys had accused the DA’s Office of withholding evidence that involved disgraced former Assistant District Attorney Diana Florence, who testified in the case.

Florence, a former head of the office’s Construction Fraud Task Force, resigned amid allegations that she withheld evidence in several other major cases in 2020.

The one-time Manhattan DA hopeful was accused of devising a “scheme” to have a summons dismissed against crane operator Steven Lewis, whom the defense accused of..Read More Here

Former NFL wide receiver Mike Williams died Tuesday morning after he was taken off life support at a Tampa, Florida, hospital following a construction accident, his agent Hadley Engelhard told CNN. Williams was 36.

Williams was performing electrical work when he was severely injured and required hospitalization, according to Engelhard.

“He will be missed. He fought hard his whole life. Prayers to his family,” Engelhard said.

Williams was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the fourth round of the 2010 NFL Draft out of Syracuse University. The Buffalo, New York native was voted second for the Associated Press Offensive Rookie of the Year after catching 65 passes for 964 yards and 11 touchdowns. He started all 16 games for the Buccaneers.. Read more here