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Helping sales one raft at a time

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Headquartered in London, TET Ltd the leading IT services company, approached us to improve the acoustics in their large sales and admin area of the office.

As you’d expect, a sales office is a hive of activity and their office is no exception and coupled with the architectural design of the building, with its modern industrial inspired interiors, the noise levels were rising to unacceptable volumes. The admin area was within the same floorspace and the open-plan layout meant this department too would benefit from acoustic treatment.

Richard Thomson, MD at Acoustic Pods, commented: “the slab ceiling, hard wall surfaces and large glass windows were contributing to the noise problem. The sound energy generated by the sales department was simply being reflected back into the office by these hard, reflective surfaces.”

This reverberation had a detrimental effect, distorting newly generated sound waves and creating a “flutter”, affecting voice intelligibility, causing staff to elevate their voices to be heard and understood. In these circumstances the most effective treatment of office space is to deploy sound absorbing materials at the optimum density to address the reverberation without stifling the communication of the staff within these crucial departments.

We conducted a full survey of the space to determine the correct use of absorbers. For aesthetic reasons the client did not want to use wall panels across the areas and the limited free wall space supported this decision. The most practical solution was to propose acoustic rafts that could be suspended from the slab ceiling. These provide some of the most effective, best value for money “wins” when it comes to improving acoustics within an office environment.

Our Class A raft absorbers offer excellent absorption from below but also provide absorption of reflected noise on the reverse, capturing this from the bounce back off the soffit.

Unfortunately, the ceiling, like that in many modern office designs, featured a host of exposed services including electrics, lighting, data and large a/c cassettes and ducting which meant the use of suspended ceiling rafts had to be planned meticulously.
The acoustics team created a ceiling plan of the existing infrastructure and the proposed acoustic raft positions across the whole floor. This allowed the client to appreciate the full scale of the coverage and seek landlord approval for the installation. Once this and the costs were agreed upon, the installation was booked to take place over a weekend to avoid disturbing staff during normal working hours.

 

 

“We were very pleased with the service and expertise of AcousticPods. The result was a greatly improved sound environment for all our staff. The office feels like a much better place to work in now that the noise issues have been dealt with. We were able to entrust AcousticPods to work efficiently without supervision throughout the weekend installation and the work was completed on time to avoid any disruption to our business. We would highly recommend the services of AcousticPods”

Peter Squire
Projects and Quality Manager
TET Ltd