A study of the noise from construction activities at six road schemes is described, chosen to represent several types of road design in rural and urban areas. It was found that the earthworks plant used at the urban schemes was generally less powerful and better silenced than the equivalent plant used at the rural sites. It was also noted that the intensity of working was lower at the urban sites and this gave rise to lower site boundary levels. A study of the effect on ambient noise of the construction work showed that on the rural schemes the daytime ambient noise levels were increased by an average of 25 db(a) due to the construction whereas on urban schemes the average increase was 6 db(a). the TRRL method of predicting site boundary noise levels was used to calculate leq over the working day. It was found that 46 predictions on rural schemes produced an rms deviation of 3.5 db(a) and 44 predictions on urban schemes produced an rms deviation of 4.9 db(a). the larger errors of prediction found for the urban sites were partly due to the high levels of ambient noise present at some sites, and when this was taken into account in the prediction the rms error was reduced to 2.8 DB(A). (Author/publisher)
Abstract