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Lieber: City Reforms Could Trim Costs

NEW YORK CITY-The Bloomberg administration hopes reforms will make the city a less headachy client on construction, deputy mayor Lieber tells the New York Building Congress.

By Natalie Dolce and Paul Bubny | Updated on July 30, 2008

NEW YORK CITY-The bureaucratic structure faced by contractors doing business with the City of New York is one of the reasons that construction costs here are so high, according to a report released today. “Government regulations and procedures are much more onerous here, in our opinion,” said Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress, at a breakfast forum Wednesday morning. Anderson, whose organization prepared the report, noted that it costs two-and-a-half times as much to build an office tower here as it does in Chicago.

The featured speaker at the breakfast forum acknowledged the city’s role in widening the gap between New York and other markets. “We’re a bad client,” said Robert Lieber, deputy mayor for economic development. “We think that competition is the key to keeping costs under control, and we recognize that we have not presented a particularly competitive environment.”

As a result, Lieber said, “we don’t get a very robust response” on RFPs, and city construction projects often come in over budget and behind schedule. Improving the level of competition on city projects is key, he said, citing a projection that for every bid received, the final costs of a project can be reduced by 2% to 3%.

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