International construction services company, ISG Plc, is using Noise Nuisance Recorder (NNR) kits from Casella CEL (www.casellameasurement.com; 01234 844100) to monitor noise levels on a £16m project to refurbish and upgrade City Tower in Basinghall Street, London.
The refurbishment and remodelling contract encompasses work across 10 floors of the 21-storey office building – approximately 80,000 sq ft, some of which will remain occupied by office workers throughout the duration of the project.
Five Casella CEL NNR kits, using CEL-632 Sound Level Meter technology, are distributed throughout the building, positioned on tenanted floors adjacent to work areas, in order to monitor sound levels and ensure that they remain below the acceptable threshold.
Simon Featherstone, ISG’s Senior Construction Manager on the project, which is situated just 200 metres from the Barbican complex, comments: “On all of our construction and refurbishment sites it is important to maintain good relations with tenants and neighbours by ensuring that we do not cause too much noise pollution.”
He continues: “Casella was recommended by one of our project managers who had used their products on a previous job. We were looking in particular for a noise monitoring device that was compact and easy to use, combined with an effective noise reporting system at a reasonable price. The Noise Nuisance Recorder and CEL-632 Sound Level Meter fitted our brief.”
An on-site Tenant Liaison Manager is in constant contact with the office workers, the noise monitors are checked regularly and information downloaded weekly to ensure correct noise levels are maintained in tenanted offices.
Noise is generally kept below the threshold level, however, when work has to be carried out that will create excessive noise levels, ISG liaises with the tenant and conducts the work at a mutually convenient time.
Using the latest digital technology and a high resolution colour display, the CEL-632 is designed to measure noise levels as quickly and simply as possible in order to guarantee compliance with workplace noise legislation and to protect hearing.
The displayed information can be made as simple or comprehensive as required and all measurement parameters are stored simultaneously, so no incorrect measurements can be made.
Easy to use and auto-calibrate, the device features audio recording allowing the user to speak into the microphone before or after a measurement in order to annotate the result, so there’s no need to write anything down. It also incorporates pre-configured setups for occupational and environmental measurements with a 2GB memory for more than a year of data storage.
Simon concludes: “The monitors are reliable and accurate and it is easy to download data from them in no time at all which is a real benefit.”
