UBS Pavement Cleaning Noise

From time to time the City cleans the pavement in front of the UBS building on Golden Lane.  To do this the cleansing team break out the noisiest high pressure water jet machine in the whole wide world.  Just to be sure we get the maximum noise the operators lift the soundproofing lid over the engine.

Getting ready to unleash the beast

Lid-Up. Max-Noise. Thanks guys.

At least they waited until after 09:00 before starting this morning.  It took until well into the afternoon for them to finish though :-(

---
Update on 2016-09-29. The City responds:

Sorry for any inconvenience caused with regards to the cleaning of Golden Lane as described below.

I have asked our contractor for an update on concerns raised below and can confirm the following;

• Amey the City contractor will look at quieter (or electric) machines when they are due for replacement, I am led to believe that there may be a service issue with the machine and they are having it serviced and this may reduce the smoke and allow for the lid to be lowered to reduce noise in the future, they have a couple of other machines that I will take a look at to see if they are any quieter.
• The City schedule the work at weekends due to foot fall and the reason this area is scheduled every 13 weeks to be washed is due to algae that settles on the paving and makes it slippery, so all of the public benefit from the area being clean and safe. We believe that this is the best time to carry this work out when there is less traffic and people in the area, thus making the operation safer to carry out.
• The contractor are aware of the times that they are allowed to carry out noisy work and we have to share the schedule with markets and consumer protection noise team stating where and when we will carried out noisy work.
• The next scheduled clean is due approx., 17/12/16.

As stated I have discussed with our contractor and will make sure that points raised are adhered to.