Offices / Fit-out
Designing and commissioning open-plan office acoustics to international criteria
A new headquarters needed an open plan that actually works and meeting rooms that keep conversations confidential. We set the acoustic criteria, measured during fit-out, and commissioned before handover.
The problem
Open-plan areas were reverberant and distracting; meeting-room speech carried between rooms, raising confidentiality concerns.
Our approach
- 1Defined reverberation-time and speech-privacy criteria per area based on use
- 2Measured RT and background noise (NC) after absorption was installed
- 3Tested sound insulation between meeting rooms before acceptance
- 4Delivered a commissioning report comparing measured values against criteria for every area
Standards applied
ISO 3382-3ISO 16283-1NC curves
Key numbers
0.6 s
Open-plan RT
49 dB
Meeting-room DnT,w
4
Areas commissioned
Outcome
Open-plan reverberation time was commissioned at 0.6 s and the meeting rooms at 0.5 s, both inside the ISO 3382-3 design range. Sound insulation between the meeting rooms measured DnT,w 49 dB against the project's ≥ 47 dB criterion, clearing it by 2 dB — verified by test before handover rather than assumed.