What do acoustic consultants do?

History of Practice

Acoustic Consultants Limited was formed in 1987 by Stephen Peliza after a career working for small and large consultancy firms addressing building acoustics and noise from building services. Seeing a need in the market for specialist noise and acoustic only consultancies, Stephen started his own firm with the aim of providing high quality, independent and pragmatic advice to architects, contractors and developers.

In 2013, Blake Lucas and Daniel Oldaker became the Directors of the business.

The practice is now in its 35th year of trading and we employ a mixture of young and experienced acousticians who advise in a wide spectrum of noise and acoustics.

The practice is a full member of the Association of Noise Consultants (ANC) and all our consultants are members of the Institute of Acoustics (IOA). We also regularly provide undergraduates with valuable work experience. 

Practice Aims

The aim of the practice is to provide effective, accurate and cost effective advice to achieve the noise and acoustic requirements of every project. The practice focuses on providing advice that is relevant and practical in supporting the design process.

We advise on all aspects of noise and acoustics within many different sectors. This ranges from advising on acoustics and sound insulation performance for private clients and commercial organisations to undertaking environmental impact assessments for large scale residential schemes on behalf of some of the largest developers in the UK.

We work with clients to determine objective performance criteria based on their desired use of their space. This is effectively a subjective impact upon people using the space. These performance criteria form the basis of the design advice throughout the project to set benchmarks against which any design or completed project can be based.

The technical team always aim to make acoustics accessible to the lay person and will explain any impact on the proposed use of a space that the acoustics may have. Support can be provided to the client to aid in their decision making.

Technical Expertise

The practice undertakes noise modelling and calculations to assess the acoustic conditions of a proposed building and develops, as part of the design team advice, on acoustic solutions to achieve the required performance standards.

We undertake our 3D modelling with specialist software such as Cadna:A and CATT Acoustic.

We have recently developed an innovative and unique Virtual Reality Immersive Acoustics system which enables clients and end users to both, ”hear” and “see” a space at the design stage via an Oculus Rift headset and CATT Acoustic. This enables the client and design team have a good understanding of the acoustic benefit of each treatment.

Company Experience

Part of the benefit of having over 30 years of experience is that our database of schemes and library of gathered data is vast, ensuring our advice can be relied upon. There are very few types of scheme we have not worked on since 1987.