ACAV20

Acoustics and AV in Commercial Architecture: A Survey of Best Practices, Pitfalls, and Snake Oil (HSW)

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Are you concerned that you may be under-designing or over-designing your project’s acoustics? Do you wonder if certain ‘acoustical’ products are a good value? Please join us for an accessible and candid discussion of fundamental acoustics design strategies for several of the most common building types. We will highlight architectural elements that warrant conservative acoustical design, and we will dispel some of the misunderstandings and marketing mystique that lead to overly expensive constructions.

Real-Time Monitoring during Construction: Co-Existing with Vibration-Sensitive Issues

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The existence of construction and renovation projects in populated areas inevitably creates noise and vibration for both neighbors and occupants with sensitivities ranging from inconsequential to critical. Through a proper understanding of specialized, ultra-low requirements and the use of real-time feedback from monitoring systems, projects can be managed to eliminate guesswork, inefficiencies and after-the-fact claims for the contractor, and give peace of mind to the facility owner who knows someone is watching their interests. In this workshop, we will compare a variety of potential adjacent sensitivities, ranging from university research labs, health care facilities, museums, data centers and performance spaces. In doing so, we will look at some real-world examples from projects and actual approaches to mitigation and monitoring. By using best practices, any project can hope to proceed agreeably instead of under possibly avoidable adversarial conditions.

NVGN20

Safe and Sound! Protecting your Facility with Remote Monitoring

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Vibration monitoring services provide real-time analysis and feedback to construction teams, facility managers, and/or end users of highly sensitive projects at hospitals, universities, corporate research labs, manufacturing facilities, performance halls, recording studios, animal facilities, data centers, museums and even offices. Deployed at the project site, monitoring systems send tailored alarms or warning notifications by email and text if levels exceed location-specific thresholds, as well as stream data to a private central website for viewing by authorized personnel. The systems allow firms to appropriately monitor these types of facilities, whose requirements are beyond the capability of traditional seismographs (for building damage) and sound level meters (for code enforcement). Ultimately, the systems help to eliminate guesswork, inefficiencies and after-the-fact claims for the contractor, and give peace of mind to the facility who know someone is watching the line for their interests. Our brief presentation will give an overview of the systems, their use on projects, and the benefits and lessons learned through their use.

NVGN03

Vibration Considerations in High-Tech and Laboratory Environments

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An introduction to planning and designing for footfall induced vibration and structural dynamics. A multi-million dollar facility is only as good as the planning that goes into it to assure that vibration criteria are met before research or testing begins. Presentation includes a case study for MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) devices.

ACGN35

Help! There is a Sound Problem! (HSW)

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Recent trends show developers and end-users modifying existing spaces to serve a shifting array of needs; often these decisions are driven by cost. Spaces suited for one purpose could be acoustically unsuitable for another. Achieving a suitably acceptable compromise can be very challenging in an existing building where structural limitations or other feasibility issues are apparent. This program reviews a number of case studies and will teach you how to calibrate, anticipate, and address expectations or potential issues to avert an ‘acoustical disaster’.

NVGN12

Hotel on Rubber Pads – Statistical Energy Analysis/Vibration Concerns

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This case study will show how we used Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) to assess the potential noise and vibration problems of a hotel atop and around a vent building of Boston’s Central Artery. An outline of the SEA approach and results will be featured.

ACGN388

How to be a Good Neighbor: What You Need to Know about Emergency Generator Noise (HSW)

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Emergency generators are a component of a wide range of buildings from private residences to public hospitals. Regardless of the emergency generator’s size, noise emission is a common community concern. We will examine noise regulations concerning emergency generators and share noise mitigation solutions to be a good neighbor.

ACGN25

Sounds Great! Design Considerations for Tough Spaces (HSW)

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Innovative spaces that serve multiple purposes are most successful when they are aesthetically pleasing and achieve the intended acoustic goals. Forward-thinking ideas and technologies can create designs that “sound great”— both literally and figuratively. Spaces used by multiple departments in the corporate or academic worlds often serve several groups with different needs, ranging from group discussions to speaker presentations to several one-on-one conversations. Newly constructed and renovated spaces present unique challenges in catering to the varying preferences. Properly designed spaces that can be modified easily and quickly according to the users’ requirements can result in considerable savings in cost and square footage.

AVGN18

Interior Technology: Designing High-Tech Spaces that People Love to Use

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People want the latest technologies, but for these products to be considered successful they must be (a) easy-to-use (b) well-integrated into the building infrastructure and (c) reliable. In this session we will discuss strategies for sophisticated room design and share comments from end-users. Optimal high-tech design requires close design team collaboration. All of the participants (architect, interior designer, client’s staff and consultants) play a role in creating the high-tech environment that people will use. It is also a process of compromise since the real world requires well-thought out trade-offs in budgetary, technical, operational and administrative objectives and goals.

ACGN01

Acoustics 101 (HSW)

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This program covers the fundamentals of architectural acoustics as well as some commonly misunderstood principles. Topics include: sound generation and travel; human sound perceptions; sound level descriptors; and acoustic properties of materials.