Recent heavy rain has revealed that the International Broadcasting and Media Centre, specially built for the London Olympics, needs soundproofing.

Above: There's a racket inside the media centre when it rains

 In the kind of torrential downpours that much of the UK has been subject to recently, the building is too noisy to broadcast from.

The centre is to be home to thousands of journalists and hundreds of broadcasting organisations from around the world next month during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.Some 20,000 broadcasters, journalists and photographers are expected.

The Games organisers have called on soundproofing specialists from Total Vibration Solutions (TVS) to help suppress the unwelcome sound of rainfall on the metal roof.

TVS will supply a special 1mm-thick self-adhesive acoustic damping material to cover part of the building’s 28,000m²roof.

TVS managing director Paul Lafone said: “The wet weather has been unprecedented, so the organisers clearly want to ensure that they are prepared, even if the worst should happen during the Games. During my visit with the London 2012 venue & infrastructure team I actually took along a pair of cymbals, one with and one without our TVS damping sheet applied, just to illustrate its effectiveness in solving the noise and vibration problems in metallic surfaces. Unorthodox, but it seems to have demonstrated the perfect solution.”

• Click here to return to the previous page
• Subscribe to our free construction newsletters