Local Law 11 requires every New York City building taller than six storeys to have its exterior walls inspected by a qualified engineer or architect and reported to the Department of Buildings on a five-year cycle. It is administered today as the Facade Inspection Safety Program, or FISP, and it exists because falling masonry kills people.
The three results
Each report closes with a status for the facade. Across the city's filings:
| Status | Means | Filings |
|---|---|---|
| SAFE | No repair needed before the next cycle | 44,233 |
| SWARMP | Safe With A Repair And Maintenance Program — sound now, but work is required before the next cycle | 32,157 |
| UNSAFE | A condition requiring immediate attention, with public protection such as sidewalk sheds | 5,784 |
| No Report Filed | The cycle passed without a filing | 4,346 |
SWARMP is the one worth understanding, because it is the second most common result and the least self-explanatory. It does not mean the facade is fine. It means it is safe today on the condition that named repairs get done — and the next cycle's report is where you find out whether they were.
What a filing contains
A real report, filed in 2022 on a Manhattan building:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| tr6_no | TR6-904431-9A-S1 |
| cycle | 9 |
| bin | 1036085 |
| address | 617 Madison Avenue, Manhattan |
| filing_status | UNSAFE |
| prior_status | UNSAFE |
| qewi_name | Vincent Ortiz, CANY Architecture & Engineering DPC |
| exterior_wall_type_s_ | CURTAIN WALL; MASONRY CAVITY WALL; STEEL FRAME |
| late_filing_amt | 4500 |
| failure_to_file_amt | 1000 |
The QEWI — Qualified Exterior Wall Inspector — is the licensed professional who signs the report and is accountable for it. The penalty fields are real money: a late filing on this report alone carried $4,500, with a further $1,000 for failure to file. Note also prior_status: the previous cycle was UNSAFE too, which is the kind of pattern a single report cannot show you.
Cycles, and why the deadline moves by block
Filings are grouped into five-year cycles, and buildings are assigned a sub-cycle staggered by the last digit of their tax block — so two buildings a street apart can have deadlines years apart. This is why a facade deadline cannot be worked out from an address alone; you need the block, which is the middle five digits of the BBL. This site computes the sub-cycle window that way and shows the days remaining on the building page.
Which buildings it covers
Buildings greater than six storeys. That threshold is about height rather than use, so it catches ordinary pre-war apartment houses as readily as office towers. Filings are made against the BIN, not the lot, because the obligation belongs to a structure.
What a sidewalk shed tells you
The scaffolding that appears around a building is often the visible half of an UNSAFE finding: public protection goes up first, and stays up until the repairs are certified. A shed on its own is not proof of neglect — putting one up is the required response — but a shed that has stood for years alongside successive filings is a different story.
Sources: NYC Department of Buildings — Facades Compliance Filings (xubg-57si). Counts are live totals on the date queried. General information about public records, not legal, engineering or safety advice. Always check DOB NOW for a building's current filing status.