Surrey Architectural Acoustics
The Warwick School is in Redhill Surrey.
Pace Consult was commissioned to act as acoustic consultants on the design of a new teach block extension to the school, with the further addition of a sports hall block with associated changing and teaching spaces.
The new teaching block has performance spaces and large dining spaces to serve the school.
The new buildings were assessed against BB93 and specifications for wall and floor sound insulation is given to the design team and worked up into a rational design, to limit the complexity of construction by reducing the number of different wall types, which allows rapid deployment.
The architectural acoustic design was implemented in large double and triple-height performance spaces, through the use of state of the art industry standard software Odeon Room Acoustics V13. This allows the rooms to be built in a 3D environment and using complex Ray Tracing calculations allows the accurate prediction of room reverberation time. 3D modelling also ensures that acoustically absorbent materials can be located efficiently within the space, to remove over design and maintain a cost-effective approach.
The dining space and library were fundamentally linked to offer additional natural light into the library space and passive supervision from the library to the dining space below and through the use of the alternative performance standard mechanism allowed by BB93, agreement was reached with the Department for Education due to the compelling case put forward which clearly showed that the use of the library space was not likely to be adversely affected by the reduction in acoustic performance.
Having not long joined Kier I have found it an absolute pleasure working with most of their Consultants, luckily Pace Consult fall into this category!
I have been involved with Pace on two education projects, Chertsey High School and The Warwick school and have been dealing with Martin Jones on both projects.
Martin has been most professional in my dealings with Pace and importantly, is a personable chap, this goes to make the relationship work at a professional level, I believe that Martin has always gone above and beyond what is expected and has remained professional and patient throughout the ‘Clarifications’ process where the clients advisors have not necessarily understood the brief, whereas Martin has, he also has an extremely in depth knowledge of BB93 which has proved invaluable at Warwick school to assist in the design by providing a variety of options for internal acoustic layouts.
Communication and collaboration is key to design success and I have found that Martin has both of these skills and works closely with the design team.
I would have no objection in recommending Pace to anyone else and will certainly look to use them again on future projects.
Clive Lawrence, Senior Design Manager
