Buying machinery: noise at the design and procurement stage

Hearing protection and zoning manage noise that already exists. The Regulations put the emphasis higher up the hierarchy first: reducing exposure at source, so far as is reasonably practicable, before relying on protecting people from what’s left. Nowhere is that cheaper to act on than before a machine is bought and installed.

Ask about noise before you order

Machinery suppliers are required to provide noise emission information as part of the equipment’s technical documentation. In practice, that information is not always volunteered — it usually needs to be asked for directly, and compared between options, the same way you’d compare price, throughput or footprint.

• Ask for the declared noise emission figures for any machine under consideration, and treat noisier options as a real cost, not just a spec sheet number.
• Compare like for like — emission figures are only useful if measured the same way; ask the supplier how the figure was obtained.
• Consider siting and layout at the same time as the purchase decision — where a machine goes on the floor, and what's near it, affects who is exposed and by how much, just as much as the machine itself.

Retrofitting is usually the expensive option

Adding enclosures, screens or damping after a noisy machine is already installed and running is almost always harder and more expensive than specifying a quieter option, or a better location, at the outset — production has to stop, retrofits rarely perform as well as a proper enclosure designed in from the start, and in the meantime the exposure has already been happening.

A simple question to build into procurement

“What’s the noise figure, and where would this sit on our floor?” asked at the quote stage, before an order is placed, is the single cheapest noise-control step most sites never take.