Southdowns was commissioned by PM Group to undertake continuous unattended noise, vibration and dust monitoring during the construction of a new Augmentin Bulk Sterile facility at GlaxoSmithKline’s pharmaceutical manufacturing premise in Worthing, West Sussex. The new facility will be used to produce the Augmentin antibiotic medicine.
The construction of the facility is being built over a c. 24 month construction programme, with the Augmentin Bulk Sterile facility becoming operational by 2017.
The unattended environmental monitoring was established to monitor PM Group’s construction noise emissions during ground preparation, excavation, ground compaction and piling activities.
The unattended noise monitoring units were established in proximity to the nearest residential dwellings to PM Group’s worksite and were used to monitor compliance with project specific noise limits agreed with the Local Authority.
Ad-hoc attended construction noise monitoring was undertaken during the construction of the structural frame and fabric of the Augmentin Bulk Sterile building.
Four Frisbee Deposit Dust Gauges were setup to collect dust samples in the vicinity of GSK’s operational facilities and outside the nearest residential dwellings to PM Group’s worksite.
Unattended vibration monitors were installed to monitor vibration magnitudes impacting on sensitive pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment during the operation of ground compaction and CFA piling plant.
The vibration monitors were configured to issue email alerts on exceedances of predefined vibration control limits set to assist with the management of the construction vibration.
The vibration transfer functions were derived from synchronous vibration measurements made within rooms containing the sensitive equipment and at external monitoring control points in order guide the definition of the control limits.
The empirical vibration transfer functions derived took into consideration the influence of the vibration propagation through soil, the effects of building pile resonances, build coupling losses, floor-to-floor attenuation and floor resonances.
The results of the noise, vibration and dust monitoring data were documented in monthly reports.
