The Acousticians

BKL’s consulting services include all areas of acoustics and usually deal with acoustics in buildings—measuring desirable or undesirable sound/vibration—or environmental noise and vibration, including prediction, assessment, and mitigation of noise from transportation corridors or industrial facilities. BKL’s typical clients include architects, developers, government agencies, corporations, and engineers.

Within commercial buildings, BKL’s acoustical expertise finds a variety of applications. The firm can improve the sound quality within a theatre, increase the speech privacy between working spaces within an office building, reduce in-suite HVAC mechanical noise, or even cull the reverberant noise of swimming pools.

Though acoustics are typically associated with interiors, BKL regularly applies its expertise to large exterior projects. “We are currently working on a major highway improvement project to reduce both construction and operational noise, as well as vibration impacts on adjacent residences,” says BKL president Douglas Kennedy, P. Eng.

The firm has further extended its aural reach by assessing the effect of meteorology on the propagation of port noise over large distances, and it is even helping to predict the noise-mitigation effects of a proposed ground run-up enclosure at Vancouver International Airport.

Education is another key facet of BKL’s offerings. The company assists governments and regulatory bodies in developing new regulations or policies; provides classroom instruction in sound and vibration theory, measurement, and assessment; and provides expert witness testimony in courts of law.

According to Kennedy, rather than relying solely on “rules-of-thumb” recommendations, BKL commonly proposes more comprehensive services in order to better solve specific planning, design, or remedial concerns. “We are often called to resolve acoustical problems in newly completed buildings, which could have been much more easily dealt with in the design stage,” he says.

BKL utilizes its own in-house tools and customized commercial software to provide the best service in the business. “Our services are carried out using a combination of experience, relevant technical references, and tools such as specialized measurement instrumentation and modeling software,” Kennedy says. “This allows us to not only improve accuracy and efficiency in addressing complex situations but gives us the ability to effectively display our results to the layperson.”

BKL’s success is directly related to consistently maintaining a strong reputation of excellent service over a long period of time. But perhaps it is no surprise, since listening and the interpretation of sound are such uniquely human processes, that Kennedy gives the most acknowledgment to the highly trained and skilled people of BKL. “Many of our staff members are musicians or hi-fi audio buffs, which gives a clear indication of their ability to critically ‘listen’ on the job,” he says. “I think the key to our success has always been our ability to attract such highly qualified, motivated, and experienced acousticians.”