Evaluation of acoustic conditions, occupants’ satisfaction and comfort in open -plan offices: a case study of select places in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examines the acoustic comfort of occupants of open- plan offices in different indoor environments such as workplace, healthcare and learning environments con-sidering the environmental effects on speech privacy, concentration when under-taking a task and acoustic satisfaction. It has also identified the major sources of office noise that help degrade the indoor qualities of  open- plan offices  and the possible ways of eradicating or minimising them. Digital sound level meter SL-5868P was used to measure the ambient and background noise levels of these environments to ascertain the relationship between the objective assessment of the environments and the open -plan office occupants subjective rating. The average ambient noise levels in the workplace, healthcare and learning environ-ment under study were 59.8 dB (A), 60.0 dB(A) and 64.0 dB(A) respectively while the average background noise levels were 42.3 dB(A), 43.7 dB(A) and 46.1 dB(A) in that order. These are all within the accepted standards. A total of 570 (Five hundred and seventy) questionnaires were equally distributed to both male and female office occupants (respondents) in the three environments under study, out of which 439 (Four hundred and thirty nine) responses were received. This is 77% of the questionnaires given out. The overall rating scores of 2.85, 2.89 and 2.80 for workplace, healthcare and learning environments respectively by the respondents for speech privacy is not encouraging.  . This is a poor perception of the acoustic condition of the offices which has led to poor speech privacy. Just like speech privacy, the overall rating of 2.90, 2.72 and 2.61 of concentration during task performance is equally poor. The speech privacy and lack of concentration when performing a task informed the ratings of 2.52, 2.50 and 2.35 for acoustic satisfaction of the respondents which again is low. These are all due to the poor acoustic conditions of the offices which have resulted to the dissatisfaction of the respondents with their offices. There were very high correlation of 99.1%, 99.7% and 97.1% between the responds of office occupants in workplace and health, workplace and learning, health and learning environments under study respectively. Generally the occupants of these open-space offices in the three environments perceived poor acoustic comfort, poor acoustic satisfaction and poor speech privacy due to the poor acoustic conditions of the offices. Workers spend a greater part of their time in their offices and poor environmental condition might affect productivity, health and comfort. Therefore improving on the satisfaction and general comfort of the workers while in office is inevitable.