BS7827 officially known as a code of practice for designing, specifying, maintaining and operating emergency sound systems at sports venues, was initially drawn up in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, and covers not only stadia, but any venue where sport is played such as racecourses, swimming pools etc, it is also applicable to large public facilities such as shopping malls, conference and exhibition centres.
Steve Jones, a consulting engineer specialising in sound and chairman of the EPL 100-2 Working Group at BSI, who produced the revised standard, said, "The origins of this standard are a code of practice produced by a working group within the Sound Communications Industries Federation, which I chaired back in 1989 after the Hillsborough disaster.
"It was then taken into the British Standards and became BS7827 in 1996. Four years ago we had a meeting of the EPL 100 Group, and decided to revise that standard, and I was appointed chairman of the revision panel. Our first meeting was in January 2008, and now 3 and a half years later, we have published the revised standard."
The new revision, BS7827:2011, was formally concluded on the Tannoy & Lab.gruppen stand at PLASA 2011, which provided the perfect setting to put forward this new code of practice to the pro audio industry.
At the launch, Steve Jones commented, "This is a code of practice; a guide as to what to think about when you are designing a system right through to commissioning a system, and also the part in the middle, which is the electro-acoustic design and the system design and so on.
"We're hoping that some of the good work that we have put into this standard will go into EN54 part 32, which is being written at the moment by the European Working Group 3, and that will effectively be a performance standard for voice alarm systems."
(Jim Evans)
Pictured with TC Group CEO Anders Fauerskov on the stand at PLASA are members of the panel who revised the standard. Left to right: John Devaney, Dave Bearman, Steve Jones, David Tyas, Richard Northwood, Anders Fauerskov, Roland Hemming
