Noise Assessments During COVID-19

Exposure to noise in the workplace can induce hearing loss, which may lead to communication difficulties, social isolation, and reduced quality of life. COVID or no COVID, you are still required to provide a safe work place in terms of noise and Worksafe still expect compliance with relevant legislation and regulations as normal. In fact, WorkSafe is still visiting sites and issuing fines so you have no room for complacency. Whilst you are still required to comply with legislation and regulations, social distancing has changed the way that both Occupational and Environmental Noise Assessments have to be conducted.

Occupational Noise Assessments During COVID

Occupational Noise Assessments are still safe to be conducted at the moment; however procedures need to be adapted to account for social distancing and to ensure the safety of both your and our staff.  

What’s Changed To Accommodate Social Distancing?

• Higher capability personal monitoring dosimeters reduce the need for being close to employees
• Remote monitoring equipment
• Tripods to hold sound level meters to obtain measurements at operator positions 
• Simulating typical operating conditions and extrapolating data for sites operating at reduced capacities
• Conducting assessments over multiple days to accommodate split shifts

Environmental Noise Assessments During COVID

The world will get back to being a much noisier place than it is at the moment, however, people are getting used to a quieter lifestyle in the meantime. 

As businesses start to gear up again to operate at full capacity, you need to identify which activities are going to cause potential environmental noise issues. Some things you should be considering are:

• Test run processes early and keep in mind noise emissions to nearby residents as well as workers on the floor, noticing if they are higher than normal 
• Maintenance of problem noise sources to see if lubrication or parts replacement can solve the problem 
• Community consultation when noisy works are going to recommence
• Engineering controls to modify equipment to reduce noise

Construction And Sound Noise Modelling

As money flows into the construction industry to aid economic recovery, knowing what noise sources are going to be a problem can be vital to managing noise emissions, complying with regulations and minimising delays to your projects. Conducting noise modelling will:

• Allow control or mitigation measures to be implanted before they are a problem and generate complaints
• Enable planning of works to reduce noise impacts on residents
• Satisfy responsible authorities of site noise management without the need for attended measurements
• Not require access to residential properties