New York Mold Assessment Requirements: Labor Law Article 32 and §945

New York licenses mold assessors, mold remediation contractors and mold abatement workers through the Department of Labor under Labor Law Article 32, and Article 32 applies to projects on areas greater than ten square feet. The section an assessor needs to know by heart is NY Labor Law §945, "Minimum work standards for the conduct of mold assessments by licensed persons". It is short, it is frequently misread, and the misreadings tend to run in one direction: importing Texas elements that New York never enacted. This guide quotes what §945 requires, says plainly what it does not cover, and sets the two states side by side. Licensing details are on the New York licensing page.

Licensing under Article 32

Article 32 creates three licence classes: mold assessor, mold remediation contractor and mold abatement worker. The assessment licensee is the one §945 places the remediation plan on. The relationship between the other two shows in the wording of the plan's PPE element, which describes equipment "to be supplied by licensed remediators for use by licensed abaters": the contractor supplies, the workers use. The Department of Labor administers the licences through its Mold Program (New York State Department of Labor, Mold Program).

The ten-square-foot line is the scope threshold. Article 32 applies to projects on areas greater than ten square feet, exempting incidental small-area cleanups. Above that size an assessment must be performed by a licensed assessor and the remediation by a licensed contractor, and the documents described below become mandatory.

Assessment and remediation are separate

New York codifies the independence of the assessor from the remediator. Under NY Labor Law §936, a licensee who performs the mold assessment on a property cannot also perform the remediation on that same property, and vice versa. The prohibition runs both ways: a remediation contractor cannot write the plan for a job it then performs, and an assessor cannot take on the remediation of a property it assessed.

IICRC S520 frames the same separation as a principle of practice, keeping the party who scopes the work distinct from the party paid to perform it (IICRC, S520). In New York the principle is a licence condition, and it explains the structure of §945: because the assessor is the licensee who writes the plan, the plan's contents are placed on the assessor.

What §945 actually governs

This is the point most often missed. NY Labor Law §945 prescribes the mold remediation plan that the assessment licensee prepares and gives to the client before remediation begins. It does not enumerate the contents of the initial assessment report the way Texas does at 16 TAC §78.52(b)(4), which lists observations, measurements, sample locations, analysis results and interpretation as required contents of the assessment report.

New York has no equivalent list for the assessment report. An assessor working in New York still writes one, and a defensible assessment report follows the same structure anywhere (see how to write a mold inspection report), but the statutory element list a New York assessor is measured against attaches to the plan. A template that presents a New York "assessment report element list" with statutory citations is presenting something the statute does not contain.

The eight plan elements

The opening of §945 sets the duty and the timing: "A mold assessment licensee shall prepare a mold remediation plan that is specific to each remediation project and provide the plan to the client before the remediation begins. The mold remediation plan must specify:"

(a) the rooms or areas where the work will be performed; (b) the estimated quantities of materials to be cleaned or removed; (c) the methods to be used for each type of remediation in each type of area; (d) the personal protection equipment (PPE) to be supplied by licensed remediators for use by licensed abaters; (e) the proposed clearance procedures and criteria for each type of remediation in each type of area; (f) when the project is a building that is currently occupied, how to properly notify such occupants of such projects taking into consideration proper health concerns; the plan must also provide recommendations for notice and posting requirements that are appropriate for the project size, duration and points of entry; (g) an estimate of cost and an estimated time frame for completion; and (h) when possible, the underlying sources of moisture that may be causing the mold and a recommendation as to the type of contractor who would remedy the source of such moisture.

(NY Labor Law §945)

Four of these deserve a closer look, because they are where New York plans most often come up short.

Element (d) is not a generic PPE line. The statute specifies PPE "to be supplied by licensed remediators for use by licensed abaters", so the plan names what the contractor is to supply to the workers, which reflects the three-licence structure above.

Element (f) has two halves and the second is the one that gets dropped. The first half is how to notify current occupants, taking health concerns into account. The second half is a separate duty: the plan "must also provide recommendations for notice and posting requirements that are appropriate for the project size, duration and points of entry". A plan that describes occupant notification but says nothing about posting, or that posts a generic notice with no reference to the project's size, duration and entry points, has met half of element (f).

Element (g), cost and timeframe, has no Texas counterpart at all, and it is the element that most surprises assessors who trained on Texas templates. The plan carries a cost estimate and an estimated time frame for completion as its own item.

Element (h) is conditional on possibility, not optional. "When possible" means the assessor states the moisture source and recommends the type of contractor who would remedy it whenever the assessment could identify the source. Where the source could not be identified, the plan should say so rather than leave the element silent.

Containment: permissive, not required

New York does not require the plan to specify containment. The second subdivision of §945 reads: "The remediation plan MAY require containment, as appropriate" (NY Labor Law §945). That is permissive. The assessor may call for containment where the project warrants it, and in practice an active-growth remediation usually will, but there is no required containment element in the New York plan.

This matters because Texas does have one: element (5) of 16 TAC §78.100(e), "the proposed types of containment to be used during the project". A New York plan template that lists containment as a required element is importing a Texas element. Including a containment section in a New York plan is good practice where containment is appropriate; presenting it as a statutory requirement is not accurate.

New York compared with Texas

The two states' lists overlap on five elements and diverge on the rest.

The five overlapping elements are the core of a remediation scope in either state. The three New York additions, occupant notification and posting, cost and timeframe, and the moisture source with a contractor recommendation, are what distinguish a New York plan from a Texas protocol; the one Texas addition, containment, is the element most often wrongly carried into New York. The Texas list, including the four clearance sub-elements Texas attaches to its element (6), is covered in Texas mold assessment report requirements.

Clearance in New York

New York mandates the clearance document and prescribes nothing about what goes in it. Under NY Labor Law §947, a licensee who determines that remediation has been successful shall issue a written passed clearance report to the client at the conclusion of each mold remediation project, and where the project does not pass, a written final status report to the client and to the remediation licensee. The eight elements above attach to the remediation plan, not to any clearance document; reading them across is a common and confident mistake. Because §947 adds no elements, a clearance report built to the Texas six-element list already exceeds what New York asks of the passing document. The pass/fail criteria and the three jurisdictions' clearance rules are on the post-remediation clearance criteria page, and a section-by-section layout is in the mold clearance report template.

How MoldMind maps to §945

MoldMind's remediation plan carries the eight §945 elements as distinct sections: the rooms or areas, the estimated quantities, the methods per remediation type per area, the PPE to be supplied by the remediator, the clearance procedures and criteria, occupant notification with posting at containment entry points and shared access routes, the cost estimate and timeframe, and the moisture source with the type of contractor who would remedy it. Containment is included where the assessor calls for it and is not presented as a required New York element. The citation shown to a New York inspector is "NY Labor Law §945", with no sub-letter, because the elements sit under the section's first subdivision and a short-form letter is easy to miscite. A compliance panel beside the draft lists the elements the property's jurisdiction calls for and flags the ones it cannot find, a checklist that catches omissions, not a compliance guarantee. The inspector reviews and approves every document before it is issued.

For the general structure of the assessment report that precedes the plan, see how to write a mold inspection report. See the sample report.

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Sources

• NY Labor Law §945 — the mold remediation plan the assessment licensee prepares before remediation begins; the eight elements; containment permissive.
• NY Labor Law §936 — a licensee who performs the mold assessment on a property cannot also perform the remediation on that same property, and vice versa.
• NY Labor Law §947 — the passed clearance report and the final status report; no prescribed contents.
• New York State Department of Labor, Mold Program — licensing of mold assessors, remediation contractors and abatement workers under Labor Law Article 32.
• IICRC, S520 Standard for Professional Mold Remediation — assessment independent from remediation.