What Happens After an Unsafe or SWARMP Facade Report?

Getting a “Safe” finding on your FISP inspection closes the cycle. Getting anything else opens a second filing, a repair timeline, and in an Unsafe case, a public-protection obligation that stays in place until DOB agrees it can come down.

An Unsafe finding

An Unsafe finding means the inspector found a condition that could pose a danger to the public — loose masonry, a failing anchor, deteriorated terra cotta — severe enough that it needs correcting now, not on a maintenance schedule. DOB’s rule is that the condition is repaired within 90 days of the filing, and that any sidewalk shed or other public protection put up in response stays up until an amended, upgraded report is filed and accepted. Taking the shed down before that amended filing is accepted is its own violation, on top of whatever prompted the shed in the first place.

A SWARMP finding

SWARMP — Safe With a Repair and Maintenance Program — sits between Safe and Unsafe: the facade isn’t an immediate hazard, but it has conditions that need a documented, ongoing program of repair and monitoring rather than a one-time fix. That program gets tracked through DOB NOW: Safety across the rest of the cycle, and DOB expects to see it followed, not filed and forgotten.

The paperwork trail

• The initial report, filed by a Qualified Exterior Wall Inspector, sets the finding and the clock.
• Repair work gets scoped, drawn and filed — for anything beyond routine maintenance, this is usually its own DOB NOW filing with its own permit.
• An amended report, filed once repairs are complete, is what actually closes an Unsafe finding and allows protection to come down.

Repair work under an Unsafe or SWARMP finding almost always means a sidewalk shed or scaffold has to go up first — that filing, and the eventual amended FISP report that lets it come down, is exactly the kind of two-ended paperwork worth having one filing representative track end to end.