Acoustic compliance managed as a programme, not an emergency
Most organisations meet their noise obligations the same way: nothing happens for two years, then a complaint arrives, or an inspector does, and somebody urgently books a survey. The measurement is rushed, it captures one day of one year, and there is no history to put it in context. Whatever it finds, you are now reacting.
A compliance programme inverts that. Measurements happen on a schedule you set, the results accumulate into a record, and the annual review tells you what is drifting before it becomes a finding. When the complaint or the inspection does arrive — and eventually it does — you are answering from a file rather than from memory.
What a programme covers
- Occupational noise exposure — personal dosimetry and area surveys, exposure mapping by role and by area, hearing conservation support
- Boundary and community noise — levels at the site boundary and at the nearest sensitive receptors, against the applicable limit
- Plant and equipment — sound power and emission levels for individual sources, so you know which asset is driving the boundary result
- Vibration, where ground-borne transmission or structural complaints are in scope
- Annual review — trend across the full record, what changed, what is drifting, what needs attention before the next cycle
- Management reporting — one document per cycle, written to go to a regulator, a client audit or a board without being rewritten
- Site training — so your own people understand what the numbers mean and stop generating avoidable exposures
Who this is for
- Factories and manufacturing plants with both an occupational duty to employees and a boundary duty to neighbours
- Industrial estates managing multiple tenants against a shared boundary condition
- Power plants, substations and data centres with continuous plant noise and long-lived assets
- Hotels and resorts where plant noise, entertainment noise and guest complaints all sit on the same site
- Hospitals and healthcare facilities with plant noise, clinical environment criteria and neighbour obligations at once
- Quarries, mines and cement plants operating under conditions attached to an approval
- Logistics hubs, ports and depots running night operations under a curfew or a limit
- Multinationals whose group HSE standard is stricter than Thai law and has to be evidenced separately
What arrives at the end of each cycle
One report, not a stack of raw data. The measurement is the input; the deliverable is a document your HSE manager can act on and your regulator will accept.
- Measured levels against every limit that applies to you — occupational, environmental, contractual and group-internal, listed separately rather than merged into a single verdict
- Comparison against the previous cycles, so a level that has crept up by 2 dB a year is visible while it is still cheap to correct
- Ranked list of the sources actually driving each result
- Where an exceedance exists: what it is, what is causing it, and what the realistic options are, with an indication of relative cost
- Calibration certificates, instrument records, weather data and methodology — the annex that makes the result defensible if it is challenged
- Signed off by a named acoustic engineer
Occupational and environmental are two different obligations
These are routinely confused, and confusing them is expensive in both directions. Occupational noise protects your employees: it is measured at the ear, over a working shift, weighted by how long each person spends where. The instrument, the index and the assessment method are all different from environmental work, and a boundary measurement tells you almost nothing about it. Environmental noise protects your neighbours: it is measured at the receptor — where somebody actually lives — over defined periods, against a limit that in Thailand is frequently expressed relative to background rather than as an absolute number. A site can be fully compliant at the boundary and be exposing its own operators well above the occupational limit. It can also protect its workforce properly and still be generating a legitimate complaint 200 metres away. A programme covers both, because a regulator will eventually ask about both.
The record is the asset
The single measurement is worth something. The ten-year record is worth considerably more, and it is the part organisations almost never have when they need it. A history lets you show that a level was already at its current value before the neighbour's development was built. It lets you demonstrate that an exceedance was a one-off event rather than a normal operating condition. It lets you prove the plant you installed last year did not make things worse. And in a dispute, a consistent measurement record maintained before the dispute existed carries far more weight than a survey commissioned after the complaint was filed. The record is maintained in a consistent format, at consistent positions, with consistent methodology — which is what makes year-on-year comparison meaningful rather than decorative.
When the complaint or the inspection arrives
It will. The question is only what you have in your hand on the day. Organisations on a programme respond with an existing dataset, an established methodology and a named engineer who already knows the site. Organisations without one commission an urgent survey, which measures today's conditions, cannot say anything about the day in question, and arrives with no baseline to compare against. Where a programme is running, an incident response is a short piece of additional work on top of an existing foundation, not a project started from nothing under time pressure.
Training your own people
A significant share of the exceedances we measure are behavioural, not technical: a door propped open, a compressor relocated for convenience, a delivery scheduled at the wrong hour, hearing protection that is issued and not worn. Programme clients receive site training as part of the cycle — what the limits are, what drives them, which routine decisions push levels up, and how to recognise a developing problem before the next survey finds it. It is the cheapest decibel reduction available, and it is the one nobody sells you.
Standards & method
ISO 9612 · ISO 1996-1 · ISO 1996-2 · IEC 61672-1 · ISO 3744 · ISO 11201 · DIN 4150-3 · Thai National Environment Board Notification No. 29 (B.E. 2550) and the Pollution Control Department calculation method (B.E. 2565) · applicable Ministry of Labour and Ministry of Industry requirements · client group HSE standards where stricter
FAQ
How often should we measure?
It depends on the obligation and how much the site changes. Annual is the common baseline for a stable plant; semi-annual or quarterly where operations, layout or output vary significantly, or where a consent condition specifies a frequency. We set the interval against your actual obligations rather than applying a default.
We already do a survey when we need one. Why change?
Because a one-off survey has no baseline. It tells you today's number and nothing about whether that number is normal, rising, or lower than it was before the complainant moved in. The measurement costs roughly the same either way; the difference is whether it accumulates into something you can use.
Does this cover both employee exposure and neighbour complaints?
Yes, and they are assessed separately because they are different obligations with different methods, indices and limits. A site can pass one and fail the other, which is why programmes cover both.
What if a survey finds an exceedance?
You get the exceedance, its cause, the options and a view on relative cost. We do not sell the mitigation, so the ranking reflects what will actually move the number rather than what we would be paid to install. If you want, we then verify the fix worked.
Can you work to our group HSE standard rather than Thai law?
Yes, and we report both separately. Multinationals frequently carry an internal limit stricter than the local requirement, and a report that merges the two makes it impossible to demonstrate either.
Who owns the data?
You do. The full measurement record is yours, provided in a usable format, and it stays yours if you change provider.
Do you provide the report in Thai?
Yes. Reports are provided in Thai, English, or both, depending on whether they are going to a Thai authority, a head office, or an international client audit.
Can you train our staff as part of the programme?
Yes. Site training is included in the programme cycle and can be extended into a formal Geonoise Academy course for staff who need a certificate.
What happens if we get a complaint between scheduled surveys?
Incident response is available and is much faster for programme clients, because the site, the positions, the methodology and the baseline already exist. It is additional work, quoted separately, but it starts from a foundation rather than from zero.
Does a programme reduce our risk of enforcement?
It reduces the risk of being surprised, which is what usually causes enforcement problems. Drift is visible while it is still correctable, and when a question does come you answer it with a documented record rather than an assertion.