The Importance of Developing an Acoustical Guidelines Standards Document

Why Create an Acoustical Guidelines Standards Document?

Importance of Developing an Acoustical Guidelines Document

An Acoustical Guidelines Document can serve as a valuable tool for any organization involved in video or audio content production, including eLearning businesses, corporations, educational institutions, and media companies. An Acoustical Guidelines Document is a comprehensive description of the programmatic, spatial, and technical requirements for an organization's entire production operations. The document outlines production goals for live-action video, broadcast, audio recording, screen capture, audio engineering, post-production, and other content creation enterprises; describes the required spaces for each; and details technical information about the design and construction of these spaces. Such a guide is especially important for the design of production facilities, spaces whose performance depends on a complex range of factors including ceiling heights, MEP systems, vibration control, and the mitigation of external and internal noise intrusion. 

Benefits of an Acoustical Guidelines Document

Collecting all information regarding acoustical design in a single document helps an organization build consensus on production priorities and expand its capabilities in a way that aligns with broader organizational goals. The guidelines can inform searches for new real estate, prioritize facilities expansion plans, and serve as a guide for future design teams to ensure consistent quality across all facilities.

Consensus Building

The process of developing an Acoustical Guidelines Document itself helps an organization build consensus around production operations goals, programs, and design standards. Creating the guidelines requires discussion, prioritization, decision-making, and agreement on these topics. This process can include discussions on what has and has not worked in the past as well as future organizational aspirations and targets. With an architect trained in the design of acoustical facilities guiding the conversation, operational decisions can be considered in the light of design and spatial requirements. 

Importantly, creating the document is an opportunity to build consensus on these topics outside the pressure and deadline of a particular project, when there may not be time to consider higher-level organizational goals. Often, decisions made for a single project are too case-specific to be applied generally in a beneficial way. By establishing an overarching set of standards to guide project-specific applications, an organization can ensure that each of its projects serves its broader institutional mission.

Institutional Knowledge

An Acoustical Guidelines Document creates a single reference point for all matters related to an organization’s production facilities. As such, it prevents the communication breakdowns, project delays, and redundant work created when information is siloed away with individual employees, departments, and outside consultants or spread across disparate design documents. 

An Acoustical Guidelines Document makes information about an organization's production facilities accessible to input from a wider audience for periodic review. It also enhances smooth handoffs between project teams in the event of staff and management changes. Finally, the document offers a solid framework for benchmarking, evaluating, implementing, and optimizing facilities’ performance over time.

Project Build-Outs

An Acoustical Guidelines Document becomes a guide for future design teams, improving project-build out efficiency and quality as well as ensuring operational consistency across facilities. The document details the programmatic and technical information needed to develop design and construction documents for future projects. Communicating this information to the local design teams accelerates project delivery and improves quality by clearly defining the standards that each project should uphold and offering pre-approved details and product specifications. 

Developing an Acoustical Guidelines Document

An architect trained in acoustical design can consult with an organization to create an Acoustical Guidelines Document. Developing it requires close collaboration between organizational leadership, production team directors, and the architect. Working together, they can identify organizational goals and challenges and translate these into clear and comprehensive design standards.

Discover

First, the architect works with organizational leadership to identify overarching production goals, including the type of content an organization plans to produce. Then, with input from the production teams, the architect develops an understanding of the internal production workflows and identifies what facilities are needed to support current workflows, add new capabilities, and boost performance.

Audit

During this stage, the organization has a chance to evaluate past projects to better understand challenge points in design and delivery. These challenge points can include communications between the third-party architect and in-house design teams, balancing spatial efficiency across an entire facility with the square-footage demands of a full production suite, or understanding how particular production facilities impact operational capacity.

Strategize

After gaining a clear understanding of the organization’s past challenges, current capabilities, and future goals, the architect can develop an outline for a document that will address each. A well-conceived standards document is tailored to the client’s particular needs. For example, the guidelines include a taxonomy of spaces required for the organization’s specific content needs, like live-streaming, video production, interviews, or audio engineering. 

The document can also help guide broader organizational initiatives. For example, if an organization plans to expand production facilities across the United States, the standards document can include a rubric for rating a building’s suitability to host production studios.

Deliver

After developing a document outline, the architect works with in-house design teams and outside suppliers to compile the spatial, technical, and performance requirements for each space. Working from the taxonomy of required spaces previously developed, the architect describes the spatial, acoustic, lighting, equipment, technological, structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and storage requirements of each. The standards document also includes information on what support spaces each production facility requires and best practices for where these facilities should be located in relation to other building programs. 

Working with in-house design teams, the architect compiles a list of pre-approved product specifications that include use cases, lead times, performance characteristics, and assembly information. Also included are construction details for elements like acoustic glazing, lighting grids, acoustic partitions, and other common assemblies.

What an Acoustical Guidelines Document Contains

Although the exact contents of an Acoustical Guidelines Document will vary on a case-by-case basis, they generally contain at least the following sections.

Introduction

The first section of the document outlines its purpose and includes a guide for use. This allows any authorized employee, architect, designer, or consultant to take full advantage of the guidelines, facilitating project design and delivery. The introduction will also include any information that helps guide the organization’s broader initiatives, including real estate searches or production facility expansions.

Space Types

This section will include each of the standardized space types needed to support an organization’s production operations. These can include live-action stages and support spaces, audio recording facilities, instructor support spaces, audio engineering and post-production studios, and general support rooms. Each may be broken down into several subtypes that range in size and performance capabilities, allowing the client to apply the standards to a range of projects varying in size, budget, and program requirements.

For each space type, the guidelines include a written description, example image, and relevant drawings including floor plans, power and data plans, reflected ceiling plans, and section drawings. The guidelines also include standards for each space that consider how design elements impact functional requirements and acoustic performance, including items such as: 

• Size

• Ceiling height

• Access

• Adjacencies

• Proximity

• Equipment

• Cyclorama

• Drapery

• Data

• Technology

• HVAC Noise Criterion

• Exterior Sound Insulation

• Interior Sound Insulation

• Room Acoustics

• Rattling and Ringing

• Mechanical Systems

• Electrical Systems

• Lighting Systems

• Lighting Grids

• Plumbing Systems

• Fire Protection and Prevention Systems

• Structural Systems

• Finishes

• Furniture

• Maintenance

• Testing

Reference Appendix

The final section of an Acoustical Guidelines Document offers reference information that facilitates project design and delivery. This reference section can include information for each of the space types detailed in the document, including acoustic details and specifications, stage details and specifications, audio recording specifications, sample production equipment lists, and example HVAC and power load calculations for stages. The reference section also includes plans, sections, diagrams, and construction details for specialized assemblies like acoustically rated partitions, studio environments, and stage elements. 

Other information in the reference appendix may include pre-approved equipment, finishes, and furnishings with details for manufacturers, price, and lead times as well as sample budgets and order forms for each particular space type.

Case Study: LinkedIn Learning

When LinkedIn began developing Linkedin Learning—a program offering classes in software, creative, and business skills—the company consulted Interdisciplinary Architecture to create an Acoustical Guidelines Document to facilitate the design and delivery of production facilities worldwide. The document has allowed IA to efficiently deliver production facilities for LinkedIn on 3 continents, including: