Noise, along with poor room acoustics, can lead to dissatisfaction within the office environment and can significantly adversely affect workers' performance. Studies have shown that background noise can lead to as much as a 66 percent drop in productivity, and as such, the need to consider the prevailing acoustic environment is now a common business need. For example, the WELL Building Standard includes ‘Sound’ as a concept and aims to bolster occupant health and well-being through the identification and mitigation of acoustical comfort parameters, while the LEED green building rating system has indoor environment quality category that focuses on a number of factors, including acoustic performance.

While the current standard of reverberation time and background noise assessments yield important information regarding the overall acoustic characteristics of an (empty) room, they do not give any representation of the overall sound quality in a space - the annoyance associated with noise/sound in the workplace has many factors that are not accounted for in such assessment. A more human-centred approach to workplace acoustic comfort assessment is required and this project has been designed to achieve this by incorporating sound-quality based soundscape techniques in the assessment process.

This project is in partnership with Irelands leading manufacturer of acoustic measurement equipment, Sonitus Systems.