Acoustic Performance That Protects Occupancy. Engineered for Results.

Speech privacy in multi-tenant buildings usually fails at the paths around the wall, not at the wall itself. Demising partitions that terminate at the ceiling grid, shared plenums, common return-air paths, door undercuts, unsealed penetrations for conduit and sprinkler lines, and glass-fronted suites all create routes for conversation to travel between leases that are contractually and physically supposed to be separate.

This matters differently for you than it does for a facility manager. A privacy failure between two tenants isn't a comfort issue — it's a potential breach of quiet enjoyment, and in buildings with legal, financial, medical, or HR tenancies it can carry real exposure.

Memtech treats tenant separation as a systems problem. We conduct field sound transmission testing to establish what the assembly is actually delivering against what it was designed to deliver, then trace the flanking path. Corrections commonly involve extending or sealing barriers above the ceiling, treating shared plenum returns, addressing door and glass interfaces, and reducing overall speech buildup through strategic absorption. Sound masking may form part of the strategy where appropriate, but never as a standalone substitute for isolation.

The objective is measurable: reduce how far speech travels and how intelligibly it arrives on the other side.

Mechanical noise complaints tend to concentrate exactly where you least want them — the top floor, which is usually the highest rent per square foot in the building. Air handlers, chillers, cooling towers, exhaust fans, and emergency generators generate both airborne noise and structure-borne vibration, and the two require entirely different corrections.

This is the failure we see most often in commercial portfolios: an owner treats a vibration problem as a noise problem. Absorptive material goes into the tenant space, the complaint persists, and the next conversation is about abatement. Vibration transmitted through structural steel or slab connections cannot be absorbed inside the room it surfaces in — it has to be interrupted at the equipment.

We measure both, separately. Airborne paths are addressed with duct treatment, silencers, enclosures, and barrier walls at the source. Structure-borne paths are addressed with isolation bases, spring mounts, and flexible connections at the equipment. Where a unit is at end of life, we'll tell you whether replacement with better-isolated equipment costs less than treating what's there.

We also work on rooftop screening that satisfies both the acoustic requirement and municipal noise ordinances — relevant when a residential neighbor, not a tenant, is the complainant.

Every building has its own sound dynamics, and every ownership structure has its own constraints on capital, timing, and tenant disruption. Memtech uses comprehensive acoustic measurement and modeling to evaluate the actual condition, then develops a strategy that fits the asset's business plan — including phasing work around lease events where that makes more sense than doing it all at once.

A vacant floor between tenants is the least expensive moment in the entire asset lifecycle to fix an acoustic problem. There's no occupant to work around, no off-hours premium, no coordination with a tenant's operations, and the work can often be folded into a build-out that's already scheduled.

It's also the moment where the problem is easiest to ignore, because no one is currently complaining about it.

If a suite generated privacy complaints from its last occupant, it will generate them from the next one. If the floor plate is going from private offices to open plan, the acoustic condition changes materially and the previous configuration tells you nothing about how the new one will perform. And if you're pursuing a tenant whose business depends on confidentiality — legal, medical, financial, HR — acoustic performance may be an actual condition of the deal rather than a nice-to-have.

We work with owners and leasing teams to assess space between tenancies, establish what it will support, and treat it before the next lease commences. For prospective tenants with specific requirements, we can document the space's performance in advance, which turns an objection into a selling point.

Acoustic treatment in a Class A building has to look like it belongs there. A prospective tenant touring a floor should register the space as considered, not as retrofitted.

We offer a full range of architecturally integrated treatments — panels, clouds, baffles, draperies, and barriers — available in textures, colors, and configurations that work with the existing finish package. Many can be specified to disappear into the design entirely while measurably changing how a space performs.

When needed, we can use acoustic modeling and before/after playback simulations so ownership can hear the difference before capital is committed. Our engineers use predictive tools to compare design options at different price points, which supports a decision you can defend to an investment committee.

If your building isn't performing the way tenants expect — and renewals or lease-up are showing it — we can help.