A subcontractor has been penalized by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration over a worker’s fall to their death during construction at a Rabsky Group development.
Nunez Consulting Services Corp was fined $128,000 by the federal agency, The City reported. The subcontractor was overseeing work at 625 Fulton Street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn when 27-year-old Raúl Tenelema Pulí fell to his death in November.
OSHA concluded Nunez was overseeing a “willful” violation of federal workplace safety for failing to provide scaffold fall protection. Nunez was a subcontractor of Colgate Scaffolding, which employed Pulí. Nunez was also accused of “serious” violations, including not properly securing ladders and scaffolds at the site.
Pulí was installing scaffolding on the morning of Nov. 2 when he slipped and plummeted 20 feet, according to an OSHA incident summary. He was crushed by an I-beam and rushed unconscious to a hospital, where he died. OSHA reported his cause of death as blunt force trauma.
The six-figure penalty is considered to be high by construction safety standards, but short of the maximum allowable fine of $156,000.
After Pulí’s death, the Department of Buildings conducted a site visit and fined Colgate and the general contractor, Galaxy Developers, $25,000 each for “immediately hazardous” violations. Galaxy was also found to be in violation at the site in 2021 when a worker was hit in the head by steel rebar; Galaxy corrected the problem and had the violation dismissed.
Rabsky’s project is one of the largest rental developments in Brooklyn. The developer is working towards a 35-story, mixed-use tower at the site, which will include 1,098 apartments. There will be 342 studios, 492 one-bedroom and 264 two-bedroom units; 30 percent of the units will be affordable.
In March, Apollo Global Management and Madison Realty Capital provided Rabsky with a $400 million loan for the project. It replaced another $400 million loan Simon Dushinsky and Isaac Rabinowitz’s Rabsky Group took out from Madison in 2021.
— Holden Walter-Warner
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