A quantified risk-based approach to construction noise and vibration management

The management of environmental noise and vibration impacts from construction activities can significantly influence the scheduling, program, activities, and costs of construction projects. While there are a number of mitigation and management measures available to the construction site to control their environmental impacts upon neighboring sensitive receivers, efforts to reduce impacts should be focused on taking the steps that will result in the greatest reduction to the overall project’s environmental risk profile. In order to identify the countermeasures with the highest efficacy to reduce the overall risk, it is advantageous to quantify noise and vibration impacts based on ordinal metrics such as decibels and degree of annoyance. This paper describes a proposed method to quantify construction noise and vibration risk in order to improve the identification and selection of the countermeasures that should be implemented on site.