A co-working floor, fixed within a dilapidations clause
Workplace · fixed without touching the building fabric
Illustrative worked example. This is a realistic brief run through Echo using the same method a real report uses — not an account of a named past client. See every case study for more, including which of these are real, permissioned projects as they're added.
The brief
A co-working operator running an exposed-brick, industrial-look floor was getting a steady stream of member complaints — calls hard to hear, concentration hard to hold — from the small businesses sharing the space, on a floor whose head lease was the real constraint on any fix.
Co-working floor, converted warehouse building
19 × 14 × 3.4 m, about 904 m³ — polished concrete floor, exposed brick and painted blockwork walls, exposed services ceiling.
Concrete, brick and an open services ceiling left the floor at roughly 0.95 seconds — the source of both the call-clarity and concentration complaints members had been raising for months.
The standard, and the target
There's no statutory target here — this isn't a WELL-assessed building, just an operator trying to fix a real member complaint — so the brief was set by what members needed: calls and concentration work without the floor feeling clinical, in practice something in the 0.5 to 0.6 second range.
The constraint
The head lease's dilapidations clause required the floor to be returned to bare shell at lease end, which ruled out anything fixed to the structural ceiling or drilled into the brick — every route had to be freestanding and fully removable.
The decision
Freestanding acoustic screens went in between desk clusters, doubling as a visual-privacy fix members had also been asking for; a modular rug system was laid across the open floor in sections that lift out individually; and acoustic phone booths — already partly budgeted for member experience — were resized and positioned to help the reverberation figure as well as call privacy.
Every route considered, vendor-neutral — we don't sell any of it.
- Freestanding acoustic screens between desksabout 45 m² of screen face
Also solved a separate visual-privacy complaint from members.
- Modular rug system, open floor areaabout 140 m²
Lifts out in sections — nothing is glued or fixed to the concrete.
- Acoustic phone booths, resized and repositioned3 booths
Already partly budgeted for member experience; resizing folded the reverberation benefit in.
The outcome
The three changes brought the floor from roughly 0.95 seconds to around 0.6 — inside the range members needed for calls and concentration — and every part of the fix lifts out at lease end without a mark on the shell.
Indicative figures for this example, from the same method a real report uses. Not a measured survey and not a compliance certificate — where one is required, that's a survey to BS EN ISO 3382-2.
Now do it for your room.
Four questions, sixty seconds. Free to see whether you have a problem.
Check my room →Questions people ask
Why not just add a suspended ceiling, like a typical office fix?
It's usually the fastest route, but it needs fixing to the structural soffit — exactly what the dilapidations clause ruled out here. The whole brief only makes sense once that constraint is understood.
Do freestanding screens actually do enough on their own?
Combined with the rug and the booths, yes — the figures here are the same predictive method used across every example on this site, sized for this specific floor and its furniture layout, not a generic claim that screens always work.
Would an owner-occupied floor do this differently?
Almost certainly — without a bare-shell return to plan around, a suspended ceiling or fixed wall panels would likely be the faster, cheaper route. This example is specifically about what's left once that option is off the table.