Building Condition Survey and Visual Inspection

The 2019 Enacted Budget included changes to Education Laws 409-d (Comprehensive public school building safety program) and 3641 (Special apportionments and grants-in-aid to school districts). These are the sections of state law that relate to the five-year cycle for building condition surveys (BCS) and the requirement for annual visual inspections (AVI).

Under the new statute, districts must conduct Building Condition Surveys (BCS) on a staggered schedule as assigned by the Commissioner in calendar years 2020 through 2024, and every five years on that same five-year cycle thereafter. To develop the schedule, NYSED created five groupings within each of the State’s Labor Market Regions (LMR). One for each year. Data regarding the number of instructional buildings per district was used to equally distribute the number of buildings to be surveyed in each BCS cohort year. Next, data from the 2015 Building Condition Survey was used to assign groups with the highest number of buildings identified as ‘poor’ or ‘unsatisfactory’ to BCS cohort years 2020 and 2021.

For some districts, the new schedule will stretch out the period between the intensive building condition surveys for several years. To address this, the legislature chose to partially reinstate the visual inspection requirement, although it is no longer annual. Under the new statute, districts whose place in the new Building Condition Survey cycle means that they have not yet conducted a building condition survey by the end of calendar year 2020, and then by the end of calendar year 2022, must conduct a visual inspection in those years. Otherwise and thereafter, visual inspections need only be conducted as deemed necessary by the Commissioner.

2020-2024 Building Condition Survey

2020 and 2022 Visual Inspection

2020 Building Condition Survey and 2020 Visual Inspections

Action Required: Must be completed by December 31, 2020, and submitted by March 1, 2021

The 2020 Building Condition Survey (BCS) and 2020 Visual Inspection (VI) district's deadlines are looming. These surveys and inspections must be completed by 12/31/20 and submitted by 03/01/21.

Although NYSED has requested that the deadline (which is in law) be extended, an extension has not yet been provided. In the absence of such a response, we encourage all districts to prepare to complete their assigned BCSs and VIs timely. Districts assigned to the 2020 BCS grouping may lose the BCS reimbursement if there is no extension and the surveys are not completed according to the statutory timelines.

Submittal of 2020 Building Condition Survey

Each BOCES and public school district that has been assigned to complete a Building Condition Survey for all normally occupied buildings in the calendar year 2020, must submit the survey data electronically in the SED Monitoring and Vendor Performance System (SED Monitoring).
Designated personnel should log on to the NYSED Business Portal using their existing State Education Department Delegated Administrator Account System (SEDDAS) account and password. Once logged in, click on the link to the “SED Monitoring and Vendor Performance System,” then click on “Facilities,” then click “2020 Building Condition Survey.”
If you have questions or problems accessing the business portal or the SED Monitoring and Vendor Performance System, contact the SEDDAS helpdesk at SEDDAS@nysed.gov
Additional information regarding the 2020 Building Condition Survey including BOCES/public school district assignments, instructions, and answers to frequently asked questions can be found on the Office of Facilities Planning website.
Questions regarding the submission of the 2020 Building Condition Survey can be directed to the NYSED Office of Facilities Planning at (518) 474-3906 or emscfp@nysed.gov.

The surveys provided below are in a zip file and are district-by-district in PDF format.