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"Can You Hear Your
Facilities Costs Skyrocketing?"
The President's Message
by Michael I. Roman |
If you are not familiar with a new set of proposed construction standards for
classrooms, you should be. In 1998 the parent of a hearing impaired child
requested that the ADA Accessibility Guidelines be amended to include new
provisions for acoustical accessibility in schools for children who are hard of
hearing. The Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (the
"Access Board") solicited comments and input from interested parties and
directed the development of a standard on classroom acoustical design by the
American National Standards Institute ("ANSI"). The ANSI is the national
coordinator of voluntary standards development. Armed with studies and
information from the Acoustical Society of America, ANSI is looking to put some
teeth into its suggested standards by introducing the findings to the
International Code Council ("ICC"). The ICC is responsible for the
International Building Code and is working on bringing uniformity to building
codes. If adopted by the ICC, the classroom acoustical requirements would
become mandatory as part of the building codes in those states and
jurisdictions that use the international building code or its member codes.
 The proposed acoustical
standards require a reverberation time of not more than 0.6 seconds at the
mid-speech frequencies of 250,500 and 1,000 Hertz in a typical classroom and
limit background noise in an unoccupied classroom to no more than 35 decibels.
These standards are not limited to classrooms for the hard of hearing, but
would apply to all classrooms.
In order to satisfy the acoustic criteria of the proposed standard, the walls,
roof, floor, doors, lighting, windows and ventilating systems must be modified.
For portable classrooms, the proposed changes would increase the cost by at
least one-third excluding changes required in the heating, ventilating and air
conditioning ("HVAC") systems. At this time, HVAC systems for portable
classrooms operate in excess of the 35-decibel standard. New HVAC units would
have to be designed and produced. Thus, the potential cost increase of the HVAC
system in portable classrooms is unknown.
While the proposed standards have not yet been codified, implementation will
certainly assure for more costly facilities - both portable and permanent. If
you are concerned about your construction budget and stretching your available
dollars, it is imperative you learn more about the proposed acoustical
standards.
For additional information, please see
www.access.board.gov;
www.ansi.org;
www.edfacilities.org
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