If you've tried to look up a building's full enforcement history in NYC recently, you've probably noticed something frustrating: there are two separate systems, and neither one gives you the complete picture.
The Buildings Information System (BIS) has been the DOB's primary database since the 1990s. DOB NOW is the newer web-based platform that the DOB has been migrating to since 2016. The migration is still incomplete in 2026, which means building records are split across both systems with no unified search. A contractor checking their violation history in only one system is seeing half the story - and the half they're missing might be the half that costs them money.
The split between BIS and DOB NOW is not clean. It's not “everything before 2020 is in BIS and everything after is in DOB NOW.” Different filing types migrated at different times, some data exists in both systems, and some data exists in only one.
Here's the practical breakdown of where to find what.
BIS remains the authoritative source for several critical record types. All violations issued before the DOB NOW migration for that violation type are in BIS only. ECB/OATH hearing results, penalties, and default judgment status are in BIS. Contractor license records including license status, license expiry date, and insurance expiry dates for general liability, workers' compensation, and disability insurance are in BIS. Pre-2020 permit records with full filing history are in BIS. Property profiles including building class, number of stories, year built, and Certificate of Occupancy status are in BIS. And complaints filed before the 311/DOB NOW integration - which constitutes decades of complaint history - are in BIS.
For contractors, the most important BIS-only data is the license and insurance information. Your insurance expiry dates, which control whether your active permits remain valid, are displayed on your BIS license detail page. DOB NOW does not surface this information in the same way.
DOB NOW is where all new activity happens. Permit applications filed after the migration date for that work type go through DOB NOW. Inspection scheduling and results are in DOB NOW. Safety compliance filings (Construction Superintendent registration, Site Safety Manager assignments) are in DOB NOW. The DOB NOW: Safety portal handles boiler inspections, facade inspections under Local Law 11/FISP, and other periodic safety compliance filings. Active job filings with real-time status updates are in DOB NOW.
If you filed a permit this year, it's in DOB NOW. If you're scheduling inspections, you're doing it through DOB NOW. If you're checking the status of a current filing, DOB NOW has the most current information.
Some record types exist in both systems but with different levels of detail. A permit that was originally filed in BIS and later had amendments or renewals in DOB NOW will have partial records in each system. The original filing details and history are in BIS, but the most recent renewal status is in DOB NOW. If you only check one system, you might see an “active” permit in DOB NOW without knowing that it has three unresolved violations from the original filing in BIS, or you might see a “closed” job in BIS without knowing that a new filing under the same job number was submitted in DOB NOW.
The DOB has acknowledged this problem publicly but has not provided a timeline for full migration or a unified search capability. For the foreseeable future, two systems is the reality.
The two-system problem creates three specific risks for NYC contractors.
Before taking on a new project, a responsible contractor checks the building's history. What violations exist? Are there open permits? Any stop work orders? If you only check DOB NOW, you miss the building's entire pre-migration violation history. A building could have eight open violations from 2018 in BIS and show up clean in DOB NOW.
This isn't hypothetical. Buildings with long violation histories are the ones most likely to have cascading enforcement issues. A contractor who files a new permit at a building with a stack of unresolved BIS violations is walking into enhanced DOB scrutiny without knowing it. The DOB's risk-based inspection algorithms consider the full violation history across both systems - even if the contractor can only easily see one.
If you're checking on your own active jobsites, you need both systems for different reasons. DOB NOW shows you the current status of your filed permits, upcoming inspections, and any new violations issued through the DOB NOW system. BIS shows you the ECB/OATH hearing schedule and outcomes for any violations that have been issued, the status of any penalty payments, and whether a default judgment has been entered.
A contractor who only monitors DOB NOW might not realize that a violation issued at their jobsite has already gone to an OATH hearing, that a default judgment was entered because they missed the hearing date, and that the default is now accruing interest and has become a lien on the property. That entire enforcement sequence plays out in BIS, not in DOB NOW.
Your insurance status - the thing that determines whether your active permits stay valid - lives in BIS. If you primarily work in DOB NOW (as most contractors do now, since that's where permits are filed), you might not think to check BIS regularly. But BIS is where you'll first see that your disability insurance expiry date is approaching, or that your license renewal is due.
There is no cross-system notification. DOB NOW does not alert you that your BIS insurance dates are approaching expiry. You either check BIS proactively or you discover the lapse when your permits auto-expire.
For a contractor managing 15 active jobsites, the manual effort to maintain full awareness across both systems looks like this: search each address in BIS (15 searches), check the violation tab, the permit tab, and the complaints tab for each. Then search each address in DOB NOW (15 more searches), check permits, jobs, and inspection results for each. Then check your own license record in BIS for insurance dates. Then check the ECB/OATH portal for any hearing dates associated with any of those addresses.
That's roughly 30–45 individual searches across two systems (plus the ECB portal), every time you want a current picture. Industry sources estimate 15–20 hours per month for thorough compliance monitoring across all NYC portals. Most contractors don't do it - not because they don't care, but because the time cost is prohibitive when you're running active jobsites.
The contractors who get burned are the ones who checked DOB NOW, saw a clean status, and assumed they had the full picture. The violation that hit them was in BIS, in a system they didn't think to check, from a complaint they never knew about.
There's actually a third system that matters: the ECB/OATH portal. ECB hearing results are accessible through BIS, but the hearing schedule, adjudication details, and penalty payment status are managed through OATH's own systems. A violation appears in BIS when it's issued, but the hearing logistics live in OATH. If you want to know when your hearing is scheduled, whether you can request an adjournment, or whether a default has been entered, you may need to check the OATH portal directly.
Add in 311 for complaint history - which feeds into DOB inspections but lives in yet another system - and a contractor is now juggling four different portals to get a complete compliance picture for a single address.
FlagHound's pipeline queries both BIS and DOB NOW data (plus ECB/OATH and 311) through their respective APIs and Socrata endpoints. When you sign up with your contractor license number, FlagHound's matching engine identifies every property where you're the contractor of record across both systems, then monitors all of them continuously.
You don't need to know which system has which data. You don't need to run 30 separate searches across two portals. You don't need to remember to check your BIS insurance dates. FlagHound surfaces everything - violations, permits, complaints, hearing dates, and insurance deadlines - in a single dashboard with plain-English alerts that tell you what happened, which system it came from, and what you need to do about it.
The two-system problem is not going away anytime soon. The DOB has been working on the migration for a decade. Until it's complete, contractors either monitor both systems manually or let FlagHound do it for them.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
FlagHound monitors BIS, DOB NOW, ECB/OATH, and 311 data across all your jobsites automatically.
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