The consulting company ALECTIA is involved in the construction of the energy company Syd Energi’s (SE) new domicile in Esbjerg, which will be Denmark’s largest industrial building built to passive house standards. In this project, ALECTIA advises on the acoustic indoor climate - an area where the building industry imposes high demands.

ALECTIA has won the competition for construction of SE’s new domicile in Esbjerg together with Hoffmann A/S, GPP Architects, and Esbensen & Sloth-Møller. In the project ALECTIA assists with advising on the acoustic indoor climate, including airborne sound insulation, step noise level, reverberation time and speech intelligibility.

In the building, high demands are made on the sound insulation between office rooms and meeting rooms as well as on speech privacy between the individual working groups in the open-plan offices. The many departments and floors of the house are connected by a circular and very large central atrium with glass roof, resulting in some acoustic challenges in relation to reverberation time and positioning of sound absorbers.

The thermo-active structures in the working areas put very high demands on the planning of the acoustic indoor climate, and here the jury expressed great satisfaction with the acoustics report prepared by ALECTIA. In its recommendation, the jury writes, “The proposal specifies in detail the sound conditions in the building and we believe there is basis for a good sound environment”.

The largest industrial building built to passive house standards
SE’s new domicile will be Denmark’s largest industrial building built to passive house standards and will itself set new standards. In particular, there is a major focus on utilizing the heat from server rooms for heating of the building, as the energy consumption for operation of the server room is estimated to be approx. 75% of the total energy consumption of the building. For instance, this will be done by using thermo-active structures, 10 km of geothermal heating coils, heat pumps and extensive use of solar cells (1,800 m2).

The domicile has a gross area of 11,500 m2, and in addition, a warehouse building is built including an office section of approx. 3,000 m2.

The building expenditure amounts to approx. DKK 210 million, and the completion of the building is scheduled for 2013.

Acoustics, noise and vibrations
The acoustic specialists in ALECTIA are technical experts within advising, measuring and planning of acoustics, noise and vibrations, including:

• Building acoustics
• Traffic noise
• Industrial noise
• Noise mapping

ALECTIA sponsors and is a member of the Danish Acoustics Company.