Protocol to manage construction noise in urban areas: practical case in Bilbao municipality
Regular paper
TECNALIA Research & Innovation
Tuesday 2 june, 2015, 14:00 - 14:20
0.6 Madrid (49)
Abstract:
Measures to control construction noise should go beyond measuring the impact
and reacting to it. Identification of potential problems before they occur
is the optimal approach. At the same time, proposed methodologies and
protocols should be realistic and practical, since they will be implemented
in a very tight framework, both in terms of limitation of budget and time
constraints. Therefore, practical testing of them is more than welcome.
This paper presents a procedure to define acoustic requirements to urban
construction works and a methodology to answer to those requirements when
executing the works. Both were defined as result of the collaboration
between Tecnalia and a construction company in a real work developed in the
city of Bilbao. Therefore, it considers the needs,capabilities and
constraints expressed by a public local authority and a private construction
company.
The procedure includes an integral approach that considers: the prediction
of the noise impacts, proposing abatement measures and analyzing their
efficiency in real time during the timeline of the construction works.
As result of the working process some criteria to adapt the requirements
asked to different works are obtained. These criteria are related to: the
type of works, classifying them in terms of how noisy they are; and the
acoustic conditions of the area, the sensitivity to noise impact and
existing environmental noise levels (consulting noise maps, developed by the
city).
The methodology can be applied when planning and executing construction
works in an urban area. The methodology faces two key challenges: being
accepted by authorities leading the works, so not interfering too much in
the timing and costs of the works, and being applicable by the construction
companies as part of their environmental control.