Club Med and Fraser Apartments resort, Nanjing, aerial view

Sectors

Meeting room at Lilly Gateway Labs, Shanghai

Commercial Office

Office acoustics have a direct impact on employees’ productivity, with workplace studies identifying noise as the biggest distraction. Concerns over the confidentiality of office speech have increased with open workstation designs.

We work with architects and interior designers on open and closed offices in new construction, renovations and retrofits. We consider workplace use and zones, the level of teamwork and interaction, speech privacy, and noise from building systems, traffic and paging systems. Acoustic modeling and on-site testing let us predict and resolve issues in both new and existing offices.

Club Med Joyview Heilongtan resort at dusk

Hospitality

A good night’s sleep. Noise is one of the most common complaints reported by hotel guests, at every grade from budget to luxury. Hotels are often located next to airports, highways and transit, and they place many noise-generating functions close to guestrooms.

Dissatisfied guests are less likely to return and more likely to post negative reviews, and appeasing them brings direct costs such as room rebates. We work with operators, designers and developers in the U.S. and Asia on sound isolation, building systems noise and vibration, and amenity spaces such as fitness rooms, meeting rooms and ballrooms. We also review brand design and construction standards so their acoustic requirements are clear and complete. Our hotel noise survey covers 100 hotels.

Noise ranked among the top three guest concerns.

Our hotel noise survey drew more than 9,000 guest responses from 100 hotels rated 2 to 5 stars.

Read the survey

Healthcare and Senior Living

Acoustic design and noise control are a vital part of patient rest and recovery. Press Ganey surveys show that noise and its impact on rest significantly affect patient satisfaction. Continuous, consistent background sound helps reduce the annoyance of intruding noise, which matters most in neonatal care rooms.

Healthcare projects bring HIPAA speech privacy, quiet patient rooms, MRI vibration isolation and noise from emergency ground and air traffic. FGI guidelines, LEED and WELL set requirements for partition sound transmission, environmental noise, building systems noise and vibration. We work with architects, engineers, manufacturers and facilities managers so recommendations are properly implemented, on schedule and within budget.

Yongzhuo Theater auditorium during a performance

Performing Arts, Theaters and Auditoriums

Our work covers performing arts centers, theaters and auditoriums. Designing a performing arts theater requires careful attention to clarity, intelligibility, reverberation, balance and envelopment. Each instrument and voice should be heard distinctly, every seat should offer a similar experience, and reverberation adds depth and warmth to the sound.

Room layout, angles and curvatures, the orchestra pit, the stage shell, and wall and ceiling elements all direct sound to the audience. We model rooms in 3D with ray tracing to shape the design, and evaluate the site so performance spaces fit into their communities and comply with noise regulations.

Education and Civic

Classroom acoustics are directly linked to learning and comprehension, with studies suggesting poor acoustics can reduce speech intelligibility by as much as 25 percent. ANSI standards, adopted by LEED for Schools, address sound isolation between classrooms, HVAC background noise and reverberation.

We work on K-12 and campus projects, including classrooms, libraries, gymnasia, cafeterias, assembly halls, media centers and multi-purpose rooms. Solutions are often integrated with the architecture and structure, such as perforated metal decks or operable partitions that address room acoustics at minimal cost.

Multi-family and Mixed-Use

Mixed-use and multi-family projects bring energetic, lively spaces together with quiet ones. A quiet gallery or small office can become a restaurant with a sound system and kitchen exhaust, or even a cinema or bowling alley, and rooftop equipment for commercial tenants often sits above high-end residences.

Repairing acoustic problems after occupancy is difficult and costly, so we work with the design and construction teams early. Site studies assess how entertainment, retail, commercial and residential spaces affect each other and their neighbors, from building systems and tenants to traffic, and confirm compliance with local noise ordinances. For condominiums we set floor impact performance.

Retail

Stores combine high ceilings, hard finishes, background music and close neighbors. We address isolation between tenants and from homes or hotels above, reverberation on the sales floor, and noise from rooftop equipment and kitchen exhaust.

Industrial

Industrial noise work identifies the dominant sources, measures worker exposure and predicts what reaches the community. We use spectrum analysis, acoustic cameras and dosimetry, then design the mitigation.

Wireless and Mobile

New wireless and telecommunication sites often introduce new noise sources to the local environment, governed by municipal, county or state code limits. For new and updated sites, we conduct noise measurements on site, prepare the reporting needed to show noise limits will be met, and provide the recommended design and mitigation measures.

Our team has assisted carriers such as T-Mobile, Verizon, Sirius XM, Qwest and AT&T over the years, and can conduct on-site measurements to suit tight schedules. When needed, we also provide expert witness services to review current installations.

Environmental noise measurements
Noise modeling and calculations
3D noise contours
Design recommendations
Expert witness support
Peer review