Standards and compliances are an integral part of any product or process; these are required to set a minimum governance of practice to arrive at assured quality deliverables.
While many standards and guidelines evolved over the past century for many of the applications areas, there are lot more of products and services that are either not covered by the compliances or not being implemented in their right adequacy.
Noise & Vibrations, since their use and inception in many engineering activities, have several governing practices, particularly in the automotive and aerospace domains. Vehicle pass-by noise for example, is one of the oldest standard in practice and being constantly evolved based on the changing requirements of the user; likewise, the machine tool vibration standards have their roots as early as in the year 1940's and are constantly updated based on the modern-day requirements.
The good side of such 'shoulder markers' are that the output quality of a product or service will over time become a default and the pursuit to match or exceed these will set in, which essentially is the true progression.
Practices of noise and vibration codes and standards in construction, civil and architectural engineering spaces however, are still in their nascent stage, particularly in the Indian sub-continent; while the rate of urbanisation and industrialisation are on their leaps with a whole lot of new and modern day constructions happening all over the country, the use of appropriate building codes that govern the noise and vibration guidelines are either not adapted or are being ignored.
The fallout of such compromises is a tough situation to handle; over the years, NV Dynamics has worked on many complex cases of assessing and quantifying the acoustical and vibration behaviour of large multi-story parking lots, auditoriums, classrooms and even the residential high-risers. Most of the findings were pointing to the deviations to the code of construction (noise and vibration guidelines) or its appropriate implementation.
Across the world and off late in the middle east countries, the practice of following building codes and noise and vibration compliances upfront during the design stage have become both mandatory and a standard practice; this has resulted in a long-term economic benefit to the usage of such spaces for their designated purpose.
While some of the leading construction houses in India are hard pressing themselves to bring about these practices, it is high time that we adapt the codes as a standard prescription to elevate our construction standard; these rules are likely to be much in place in the coming years with increased quality requirements both from the end client and implementing agencies.