The Department of Buildings has posted a new set of frequently asked questions explaining how to supersede or withdraw a filing inside DOB NOW: Build, the city's online permit and filing portal.
The guidance, published on the agency's website, walks filers through two moves that come up constantly on active jobs: superseding a filing — replacing it with a corrected or updated version — and withdrawing one outright. Until now, contractors and expediters have largely had to guess at the mechanics or call 311 and wait.
For a GC or expediter, this matters because a botched supersede can stall a permit for weeks. Change a scope of work, swap a design professional, or revise a set of drawings mid-review, and the filing often has to be superseded rather than simply amended — do it wrong and DOB NOW can kick the whole application back to square one. A withdrawal, meanwhile, closes out a filing that's no longer needed, which matters for anyone trying to keep a contractor's DOB filing history clean for bonding or prequalification purposes.
DOB NOW: Build is the portal of record for new building, alteration, and most trade permit applications citywide, and filing errors inside it are a routine source of delay on jobs of every size. The FAQ page does not change any fee or review timeline; it documents the existing process. The agency did not attach an effective date, meaning the guidance applies to filings already in the pipeline as well as new ones.
What to do next
If you have an open DOB NOW filing that needs a correction — a design change, a contractor swap, a wrong block and lot — pull up the new FAQ page before you touch the filing. Walking through supersede versus withdrawal in the wrong order can cost you your place in the review queue.
Expediters should flag this to any PE or RA they work with regularly; a lot of supersede headaches start when a design professional revises drawings without looping in whoever manages the DOB NOW account.
The FAQ is live now at nyc.gov with no sunset date, so there's no deadline pressure — but if you've got a filing sitting in limbo because of a scope change, this is the first thing to read before calling 311.