Parking garage inspections in NYC: Local Law 126 and the six-year cycle
Local Law 126 of 2021 requires a condition assessment of every parking structure every six years, by a QPSI. Your deadline depends on the Community District, not the block. The cycles, the exceptions, and the 90-day clock on Unsafe.
Does my parking garage need an inspection in New York City?
If it is a parking structure — a building or part of a building used to park or store motor vehicles, including space inside or under a building — then yes. Local Law 126 of 2021 requires the owner to hire a New York State licensed Professional Engineer who is also a DOB-designated Qualified Parking Structure Inspector (QPSI) to inspect it and file a condition assessment at least once every six years. The deadline depends on the Community District the garage is in.
What matters on a real job
Your cycle comes from the Community District, not the block
Manhattan CDs 1–7 filed in the window that ran 1 Jan 2022 to 31 Dec 2023. Manhattan CDs 8–12 and all of Brooklyn: 1 Jan 2024 to 31 Dec 2025. All of the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island: 1 Jan 2026 to 31 Dec 2027 — and then by 31 December of every sixth year after. This is the opposite of FISP, which goes by block number.
A QPSI, not any engineer
It has to be a NYS licensed and registered PE who DOB has separately designated as a Qualified Parking Structure Inspector under 1 RCNY 101-07. A structural engineer without that designation cannot file it.
What is not a parking structure
Autobody and automotive repair shops, showrooms and service stations; garages with capacity for fewer than three vehicles; unenclosed and unattached outdoor lots; and garages serving one- and two-family homes.
Unsafe is the same 90-day clock as a facade
Unsafe conditions must be repaired within 90 days of filing the condition assessment, and an amended report filed within two weeks of finishing the work.
SREM is the garage version of SWARMP, with a sharper edge
Safe with Repairs and/or Engineering Monitoring means the structure is usable but has conditions on a clock. And if a recommended SREM repair is not completed by the next cycle, it has to be reported as Unsafe. The deferral does not roll over twice.
There was a one-time initial observation
Garages in the B and C sub-cycles owed a one-time initial observation by 1 August 2024, performed by or under the direct supervision of a QPSI. If a building you are taking over never did it, that gap is already behind schedule.
Source: NYC DOB — Parapets page, Service Notice "Annual Parapet Observation" (14 Nov 2023), 1 RCNY §103-15, Parking Structures page, Service Updates of 23 Nov 2021 and 22 Jul 2022, and the Periodic Inspection of Parking Structures FAQs (nyc.gov/buildings). Checked 7 Oct 2026.