In October 1947, Chuck Yeager piloted his rocket-powered “Glamorous Glennis” Bell B-1 to a speed of 700 mph to become the first person to break the sound barrier. Nine months, later he was awarded the massive, 525-pound Collier aviation trophy for being “the fastest man alive.” If your acoustician excitedly announces that you just broke through the sound barrier, you probably aren’t going to be expecting the design and construction team to throw you a ticker-tape parade on your way home.
The design and construction of high-performance sound barriers (walls, ceilings, floors, doors, windows, etc.) needed to noise-isolate courtrooms, theaters, and conference rooms is a difficult exercise requiring guided team effort. Unless the owner, architect, designer, engineer, construction manager, manufacturers, distributors and contractors all understand and agree on the project goals and function as a team, sound barriers will be broken and the project will not achieve many of its system-level goals. Unfortunately, the typical design and construction team might be described as a “prisoner’s dilemma,” in which each individual team member is rewarded for not being cooperative.