Trautmann U.

Residents living near to inner-city building sites are frequently affected by the noise emitted by the building sites, which disturbs sleep, mental concentration, and speech communication. The neighbors’ right to rest is in conflict with the contractors’ interest in performing building work in the shortest possible time, and with intense utilization of the equipment and machinery. The general procedure of site-noise prediction is illustrated. The sound power levels of the machines in use can be found in a database elaborated by the author. Intermittent operation of the machines reduces their sound power as taken into account in the calculation of the rating level (time-average level). Commercially available computer software is used for calculating sound propagation from the site to the points of reception on the basis of ISO 9613-2. In the case of a large construction site of a department store in Berlin continuous measurements were carried out. Extraneous noise had been identified by recording the time signal and subsequent “listening” to the recording (e.g. church bells, air-traffic noise). The comparison of predicted and long-time measured values allows an assessment of accuracy of site noise prediction.