St Leonards Hospice

The Brief

St Leonards Hospice York required a meeting and video
conferencing space for Project ECHO.
Project ECHO provides a model of education that offers
knowledge sharing amongst health care professionals,
currently operating in over 35 countries.

ECHO creates accessible learning opportunities with
the aim of bringing care staff together to create a
community of practice from across the care sector,
regardless of role or location.

St Leonards Mark Richardson and his team required a new
video conferencing room set up for this project, the location
selected was the old stable block.

Design Process

At the site meeting it was found that anywhere you stood within the room the sound of voices echoed and reverberated to an unacceptable level for Video Conferencing.

This would be a major problem for users when conducting meetings within the space and would greatly affect the quality of service for Video Conferencing.

We discussed lots of different options available, Quadra went away armed with all the information needed to work out the best way forward and to offer the right solution.

The start of the Acoustic process is for Quadra to attend site to conduct a site survey, here we discuss what the main use of the space is tailored for. We then take room measurements and noted the room fabric, this information is used for our reverberation calculations

We then use a special programme which generates the sound reflection parameters of the room before acoustic treatment.

From this we calculate the combination of acoustic panels to get the best solution.

St Leonard’s also needed a movable wall so the VC camera doesn’t look out through windows when in use and formed from a small room within a room. This being the case Quadra designed the mobile walls which incorporated some of the acoustic panels.

We supplied a reverb print out (above) showing the reduction after the treatment and room layout drawings to show what and where the acoustics are to be installed.

After the treatment the VC area reverberation was reduced by 54%

Client Feedback

We wanted to convert an existing training room into a
video conferencing suite to deliver work on behalf of St
Leonards Hospice.

Quadra staff visited us to survey the room, at the
meeting we discussed different options of how to treat
the difficult acoustics due to all the hard surfaces.
Left untreated would have detracted from the video
conference experience for audiences.

Quadra listened to our requirements and quickly
presented an appropriate, cost effective solution.
The attention to detail was excellent including colour matching the acoustic panels to our corporate colours.

The installation team were excellent, friendly and very efficient.
We are really pleased with how the room looks and
performs and it is receiving excellent feedback from
staff and video conference users and audiences.

Mark Richardson
Information Manager
St Leonards Hospice NHS UK

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