Office & Workplace Acoustics
Modern offices must balance speech privacy with collaboration. Noise in open-plan space erodes concentration, lowers productivity, and makes meetings leak confidential talk. We assess and design the acoustics of workspaces, meeting rooms, and executive suites — reverberation, background noise, speech privacy, and sound masking — to international standards and green-building criteria.
Scope of work
- Assess open-plan speech privacy to ISO 3382-3 (distraction distance, spatial decay)
- Measure and design reverberation time (RT) to ISO 3382 for the task
- Control HVAC and MEP background noise to NC/NR criteria
- Design meeting-room and executive-suite confidentiality for private conversations
- Design and tune sound-masking systems to raise speech privacy
- Specify absorptive materials, ceilings, walls, and partitions with predicted results
- Support WELL and LEED acoustic credits
Standards & method
We work to ISO 3382-3 for open-plan office acoustics, ISO 3382 for reverberation, ASTM E1110/E1130 for speech-privacy assessment, and NC/NR criteria for background noise — aligned to the acoustic credits of the WELL Building Standard and LEED.
What you receive
- A TH/EN report with RT, NC/NR, distraction distance, and speech-privacy indices
- Good / Better / Best options with predicted results and budget
- Absorptive material, ceiling, partition details, and sound-masking specifications
- Documentation to support WELL/LEED certification (if required)
FAQ
Can an open-plan office really be quiet and private?
Yes — with the right mix of absorption at the ceiling and walls, layout planning, and a properly tuned sound-masking system. We verify it with distraction distance to ISO 3382-3 to prove the workspace is genuinely private enough.
What is sound masking, and is it necessary?
Sound masking adds a low, specifically engineered background sound that covers distant speech so it stops being distracting and raises privacy. It suits open-plan offices and spaces needing confidentiality — but it must be designed and tuned correctly, or it becomes noise itself.