Erich Thalheimer, BSME, INCE Bd. Cert., Acoustical Engineer

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Erich Thalheimer, BSME, INCE Bd. Cert., is a degreed mechanical engineer and professional acoustician. Mr. Thalheimer is Board Certified by the Institute of Noise Control Engineering (www.INCEUSA.org), and has won numerous awards and recognition from his peers for his contributions to the noise and vibration control industry.

Mr. Thalheimer has more than 35 years experience in professional practice and education. His broad background includes assessments and mitigation for environmental, infrastructure and transportation (highway, airport, railroad, transit) projects; major construction projects; power generation; HVAC noise control; architectural acoustics; applied noise and vibration research; product testing; underwater acoustics; and advanced noise and vibration modeling and measurements. He has provided expert witness testimony in court, and has published and presented scores of technical papers and articles.



 

Mr. Thalheimer’s accumulation of knowledge and successful leadership on the Central Artery/Tunnel (The Big Dig) Project’s noise control program (http://CAT Noise Program, NCEJ, 48(5), Sep-Oct 2000.pdf) earned him the status of Board Certified by the Institute of Noise Control Engineering (No. 20104) in 2001.

For his work, Mr. Thalheimer was honored by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association with a Globe Award in 2003, and received the Artery Business Committee’s Excellence in Building Award in 2001. He has also appeared in several TV documentaries, newscasts, and newspaper articles regarding construction noise control. 

Mr. Thalheimer has shared these experiences with the engineering community through more than a dozen published technical papers. Recently he concluded his work with FHWA and the Volpe Center to establish a new national policy and assessment procedure for construction noise, entitled Roadway Construction Noise Model (RCNM), which was officially released by FHWA in February 2006 and is available for downloading at (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/noise/construction_noise/index.cfm). 

More recently he completed work with the New York City DEP to update and improve the New York City Construction Noise Regulations which took effect in July 2007 and can be seen at (http://nyc.gov/html/dep/html/noise/index.shtml).  For this effort, Mr. Thalheimer received a 2009 ACEC Silver Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies as well as the 2010 NHCA Safe-In-Sound Award from the National Hearing Conservation Association.  And in 2012 he was given the distinct honor of presenting the opening ceremony plenary speech at the Inter-Noise 2012 Conference.

You can watch portions of Mr. Thalheimer's speech at InterNoise 2012 on these three YouTube links:

1 of 3:  http://youtu.be/pytuehFADMQ

2 of 3:  http://youtu.be/Ozt0NPTmOMg

3 of 3:  http://youtu.be/31-97oF4f0w

Mr. Thalheimer is well versed in using a variety of instrumentation and computer applications. He is an advanced user of the sophisticated Cadna-A Environmental Noise Model by DataKustik; and is a certified user of the FHWA's Traffic Noise Model (TNM) for highway noise and barrier assessment. He is also intimately familiar and a frequent user of the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) rail noise and vibration impact models, and is a certified user of the FAA's Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT). He has personally developed analytical/empirical noise and vibration prediction models to evaluate potential environmental impacts against established criteria. Computed and measured outdoor sound metrics include sound pressure level (SPL), sound power level (PWL), percentile levels (Ln%), maximum sound levels (Lmax), energy-average sound levels (Leq & SEL), and 24-hour sound levels (Ldn).

For interior acoustics, Mr. Thalheimer makes use of the Cadna-R model for speech intelligibility, the INSUL model for wall/floor sound insulation, and the TAP and AIM models for interior HVAC noise. Measured architectural sound levels include sound pressure level (SPL), wall/floor transmission loss (STC), reverberation time (T60), HVAC and background sound levels (NC & RC).

Mr. Thalheimer has also been a contributing member of several technical standards committees including ANSI S12 for community noise, ISO 2631/5349 for human vibration and IES S10 for roadway lighting. He is also a frequent participant and technical contributor at TRB and INCE noise-related conferences. And he has appeared on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel, and has been a technical advisor for acoustics on the FOX television shows “Bones” and “CSI:Miami”.


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Mr. Thalheimer has also won numerous awards and been honored by independent organizations for his outstanding technical work and leadership on significant projects.  Several awards are shown here, and others are listed below.










Independent Awards:

 

•   INCE Board Certified - Institute of Noise Control Engineering, effective 6/8/01.


•   Approved Expert Witness to provide testimony in courtrooms.


• Winner of 2010 NHCA Safe-In-Sound Award from the National Hearing Conservation Association for work in developing new New York City Construction Noise Regulations. See Erich's award acceptance speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK9163cVwpo%26feature=channel


•  Winner of 2009 ACEC Silver Award for Engineering Excellence from the American council of Engineering Companies for work in developing new New York City Construction Noise Regulations.


•  Winner of a 2003 ARTBA Globe Award from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association.


• Winner of the 2001 ABC Excellence in Building Award from the Artery Business Committee.


•  Appointed "INDIVIDUAL EXPERT" by the Acoustical Society of America for the S3 Accredited Standards Committees for 1996/1997.


•  Invited engineering lecturer at UMass, UConn, WPI, RPI, Tufts, Wentworth and Massachusetts Museum of Fine Arts School.


•  National Security Clearance to perform "SECRET" level work.