Miss an inspection appointment with the Department of Buildings and starting soon, that costs you — not a warning, a bill. DOB has moved to charge a no-show fee when a contractor or filing rep books an inspection slot and nobody's on-site to meet the inspector.
Here's why this matters more than it sounds like it should. Inspections get booked weeks out on some queues, and jobsite schedules slip constantly — a sub finishes late, an inspection window gets missed by twenty minutes, a foreman sends the wrong guy to the wrong address. None of that used to cost anything beyond the lost slot. Now it does.
The industry pushback, first reported by The Real Deal's Policy Pro column, is straightforward: DOB inspectors already show up late or not at all on a meaningful share of scheduled visits, and this fee only runs one direction. A contractor eating a no-show charge because DOB's own inspector didn't show is the exact complaint driving the industry reaction — and it's a fair one if the agency hasn't built in a mirror penalty for its own side.
What you do about it starting now: treat every DOB inspection appointment like a mandatory walk-through, not a placeholder. Confirm the trade contractor or super who needs to be present has the date in writing, confirm the address and unit are correct on the DOB NOW filing, and if you have to cancel, cancel inside whatever window DOB sets rather than simply not showing. If DOB's inspector is the one who doesn't show, get a timestamp — a photo of the empty site, a call log — because that record is what you'll need if you want to contest a fee assessed for a no-show that wasn't yours.
This is still moving through DOB's rulemaking and industry-comment process, so the exact fee amount and the appeal mechanism are not yet locked. Treat this as an early warning, not a final rule: watch for the published rule text before you bake a number into your general conditions.