What a site safety plan covers
A site safety plan is the drawing set that documents every measure protecting people and property while construction is underway. Fencing and sidewalk sheds. Netting and overhead protection. Hoisting and crane locations. Loading and staging zones. Egress and ingress routes. Adjacent property protection. Fire safety provisions. The sequencing of major operations so that each phase of work has protection matched to it.
In New York City it is governed by Chapter 33 of the NYC Building Code, which sets the requirements for safeguards during construction and demolition. Site safety plan requirements sit in BC 3310.
At 7 stories or more than 75 feet, the site safety plan must be filed with the Department of Buildings and approved before work proceeds. Below that threshold a plan is still required and still has to be on site, but it does not go to DOB for approval.
This threshold has changed. Older guidance, including material still published by other firms, cites a higher figure. If you are working from a number you read a few years ago, check it.
Complete package or phased package
DOB accepts site safety plans in two forms, and the choice affects how your review runs.
A Complete Site Safety Package covers the entire project in one submission, from support of excavation through project sign off. Drawings are identified as SS-700 series. One review, one approval, everything settled up front.
A Phased Site Safety Package splits the review into four individually manageable portions of the project. Each phase is submitted and reviewed on its own, so you can break ground on phase one while phase three is still being drawn.
Which one suits you depends on the job. A complete package is cleaner administratively. A phased package gets you moving sooner on long projects where later conditions are not yet fixed. We will tell you which we would file and why.
The four phases
A phased submission divides the project this way. Each phase has its own drawing series and its own review.
How the filing runs
For jobs in DOB NOW, site safety requests go through DOB NOW: Build, from the Job Filings Dashboard. Plans can be submitted before the job itself is approved. The plan examiner first reviews the site safety criteria, including building height, stories, and footprint, and once that clears you are cleared to submit the plans.
Older BIS jobs follow a separate path, submitted by email to the Construction Safety Compliance plan examination unit as a zipped PDF under 15 MB, with a digital cover sheet and a specific file naming convention.
Send us the project
Address, scope, height, and what stage you are at. We come back with a scope of work and a price.
We research the conditions
What is next door, what is in the right of way, what the site allows, and what the examiner will expect to see given the conditions.
We draw the plan
Drawn to the correct series and naming convention for the package type, so nothing bounces on a technicality.
We file it
Submitted through the right channel for your job, with the supporting documentation the Department expects.
We clear objections
Most objections are the same handful, raised over and over. We file to avoid them, and when one comes back we already know what it wants.
Which projects need one
New construction, conversions, alterations, and facade restorations. Anything where the height or the scope brings the job under the Chapter 33 requirements.
We have filed on jobs from one-family homes to 40-story towers, which means we are not working out your project from scratch. We have drawn the condition before, and we know what the sheet needs to show.
Read the code yourself
Everything above can be checked against the source. Chapter 33 is published in full by the Department, and the submission requirements are on their site.
See our FAQ and code reference for direct links to Chapter 33, the DOB site safety pages, and the Department’s own updates and industry notices.