Fourteen years of acoustic work in the Kingdom, from SABIC in 2011 to Al Madinah in 2025.

The record

Every engagement below is a named Saudi project we delivered. The scope column states what we were appointed to do, in the words we use on the project pages. Two of them are written up in full as case studies.

Some engagements, particularly for government and defense-related clients, are described by sector and scope only. References and contact details for named projects are available on request.

What drives acoustic scope on Saudi projects

Four documents decide how much acoustic work a Saudi project carries, and they rarely arrive together. The Saudi Building Code sets the statutory floor. A rating system, where one is targeted, adds credits that have to be designed for and then verified. An operator brand standard, on a hotel, is usually the most demanding document in the set. And the project specification carries whatever the other three left open.

The order matters, because the code is the narrowest of the four. Our briefing on the subject sets out what the code actually specifies and what it leaves to the project team: Acoustic requirements in the Saudi Building Code

Mostadam, the Saudi rating system, carries an acoustics credit in its Health and Comfort category. LEED and BREEAM both credit acoustic performance, and both ask for evidence at more than one project stage, which is why we treat a credit as a schedule of work from the first week rather than a paragraph in a report. We work to LEED and BREEAM acoustic credit requirements as part of our standards framework.

On hospitality work the operator brand standard usually governs. It reaches further into the design than most project teams expect: a guest room criterion constrains the partition schedule, the glazing specification, the door assemblies, and the rooftop plant selection at the same time. We designed the Waldorf Astoria Al Madinah against exactly that chain, starting outside the building with a 3D outdoor noise model so that each elevation received the facade rating it needed rather than a uniform worst case.

The three services that carry most of this work

Architectural and building acoustics. Sound insulation, impact isolation, and room acoustics: the guest rooms in Al Madinah, the 500-seat auditorium at Riyadh American School, the patient room mock-up at King Faisal Medical Center. This is where a brand standard or a rating credit turns into a partition, a floor build-up, and a door.

Noise mapping and 3D simulation. Outdoor propagation models to ISO 9613-2 that size the facade before procurement, as at King Abdullah Financial District and Al Madinah. A model run costs a fraction of a glazing change order.

Acoustic testing and commissioning. In-situ airborne and impact measurement, vibration isolation validation, and HVAC commissioning: the facade element and demising partition testing at King Abdullah Financial District, the in-situ measurements at King Faisal Medical Center, the jet engine test cell measurements in Dhahran. Rating systems and operators ask for measured evidence, and we are the firm that takes it.

Related services: Architectural and Building Acoustics Noise Mapping and 3D Simulation Acoustic Testing and Commissioning

How we mobilize

We mobilize survey and commissioning teams to sites across Saudi Arabia and the GCC. Surveys, mock-up testing, and commissioning measurements are carried out by our own testing team with calibrated Class 1 instrumentation, and every test report states the method, the instrument, and its calibration status.

The practical consequence is that one firm carries the whole chain: the baseline survey that sets the design targets, the model that sizes the mitigation, the specification that puts it into the contract, and the measurement that proves it at handover. Nothing is subcontracted across that boundary, which is where acoustic performance is usually lost.