Panmure Gordon - Gabriel

Increasing privacy levels and reducing interruptions at the iconic new development, One New Change, in the heart of St Paul’s.

Panmure Gordon, one of London’s oldest financial institutions, occupied the recent retail and commercial development, One New Change, in 2012. Their 15,000 sq ft office, designed and built by leading fit-out contractor Maris Interiors, had a front-of-house meeting suite where sensitive and confidential meetings were held on an hourly basis. The back office consisted of various business operations such as HR, Traders and the Research team.

Despite having an exceptional partition/ceiling specification in the meeting suite, conversations were intelligible across the rooms and out to reception. The main cause of this was the low noise floor of the building, which measured approximately 35dBA. Acoustic Comfort was employed to provide a solution to provide speech privacy, with every other avenue exhausted.

The client chose to install the LogiSon sound masking system, due to its acute tuning and addressability. The ability to have complete control over each individual room was key for the client as a means of eliminating any risk, since many of the visitors to the space were key to the business.

Thanks to the success of the meeting suite installation, the client added further treatment to the back office areas such as the trading floor, corridors and management offices.

Client testimonial

We deliberately chose the highest specification within budget when building the meeting suite. Included was slab-to-slab partitioning on the dividing walls, acoustic glass and absorbent panelling. However, (as we would later find out) due to the low background noise, we could still hear conversations clearly, which was potentially damaging to the business. Maris helped us source a specialist to provide the confidentiality our business required. Acoustic Comfort provided a number of on-site sound masking demonstrations and arranged visits to other local installations. Having carried out our due diligence, it became apparent that the LogiSon system was the market leader and the only system available that could offer us the flexibility we needed.

Admittedly, we were sceptical that sound masking technology would work, hence the rigorous testing beforehand, but have been delighted with the outcome. So much so, that we have extended the treatment to the majority of the office. We wanted our Research & Analysis staff to be able to work adjacent to the Traders without being constantly interrupted by noise. We also wanted Senior Management to have better privacy in their cellular offices.

We would certainly recommend Acoustic Comfort to any business suffering similar issues.

Nick Cook, Operations Managing Director