The management consulting firm Accenture recently moved into a new four story office space. To help increase speech privacy and workplace effectiveness, sound masking is a key element throughout the new facility, which is 70 percent open plan.

The move to the new office was completed in two phases. The first phase involved the relocation of the company’s solutions centre to one of the floors. A traditional phenum-based sound masking system was installed on this floor.

When the second phase of the move was implemented a year later, Accenture decided to install an i-ceilings Sound System from Armstrong on the remaining three floors rather than a plenum-based sound masking system.

From an acoustical point of view, there were numerous challenges involved in the Accenture installation, including multiple zones per floor, a high seating density in the open plan, and lower-than-usual furniture panel heights.

However, the i-ceilings system lent itself well to the challenges and was able to be quickly balanced. Consultant Omar Longoria of HFP Acoustical says one reason was that speakers are in the ceiling plane, radiating sound energy directly into the space and thereby eliminating the problem of sound leakage.

“There is a distinct difference between the floor with the plenum-based system and the floors with the ceiling-based system, compared to the traditional system, the quality of masking sound from the i-ceilings system is much more uniform and unobtrusive. It’s a system that has turned out to be perfect for what we wanted to achieve” says Al Keller, Accenture’s Construction/Projects Manager.