A setback requirement you disagree with. A zoning interpretation that stalls the filing. A design element the rulebook never anticipated. Any one of them can stop a project.
A reconsideration request is the formal route to ask the Department of Buildings to rule on it directly.
What CCD1 and ZRD1 actually are
A CCD1 is a Construction Code Determination: a formal application to DOB when a design involves something the Building Code does not directly address. It asks the Commissioner’s office for an official interpretation. A high-rise using an unconventional façade assembly, or a structural element the 2022 code never contemplated, is CCD1 territory.
A ZRD1 is a Zoning Resolution Determination: a request for clarification or exception under the Zoning Resolution. Height limits. Floor area ratio. Use group classification. Lot mergers.
Neither is a shortcut and neither is a loophole. They are how the code admits it cannot foresee everything.
Why they matter
Filed well, a reconsideration resolves in weeks what a redesign would cost in months. Filed badly, it adds a rejection to the record.
The process
- Project evaluation. We identify where the risk actually is, which is often not where the client thinks.
- Technical documentation. Drawings, precedent, site conditions.
- Drafting the request on the CCD1 or ZRD1 form.
- Submission to the Commissioner’s office.
- Follow-up and advocacy — direct conversation with the plan examiners.
- Final determination, documented for the file.
When to file one
- The design uses materials or systems the Building Code does not define.
- Overlapping district boundaries make FAR or setback genuinely ambiguous.
- An existing structure built under a previous code — 1968, say — is being retrofitted or vertically expanded.
- A mixed-use project combines use groups in a way the tables never contemplated.
A Brooklyn developer reusing part of a 1930s warehouse for residential filed a ZRD1 for clarification on light and air requirements. It avoided a total redesign.
Why us
Reconsiderations sit at the intersection of code, zoning, and expediting. We do all three. We have filed hundreds of them.