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Built for Business

Why Acoustics Matter Here

Supporting workplace comfort, productivity, aural clarity, and speech intelligibility, strategic acoustical design helps businesses create long-term value through spaces that work well for the people who use them.

  • Improve acoustical comfort
  • Enhance speech privacy and intelligibility
  • Manage noise between spaces
  • Meet design standards and guidelines
  • Control mechanical and operational noise
  • Limit reverberation and noise buildup
  • Support in-person and hybrid meetings

The People Behind Our Work

Meet Our Technical Leads

  • Paul Marks
    Paul Marks

    M.Sc., MIOA

    Vice President, Project Delivery

    Paul Marks

    Paul Marks, M.Sc., MIOA

    Vice President, Project Delivery

    Paul Marks joined BKL in 2013. He is a full corporate member of the UK Institute of Acoustics and the Canadian Acoustical Association. He has over 20 years’ experience in the measurement, analysis, and assessment of noise, vibration, and acoustical matters and is a former member of the technical advisory team working with the UK government on noise and statutory nuisance issues. During this time, Paul has undertaken major projects within Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

    He has experience in a wide range of multi-disciplinary environmental assessment projects including highway, rail, and air transportation infrastructure, mixed-use and brownfield regeneration schemes, renewable energy facilities, and power generation plants.

    Paul also has experience in a broad range of building and architectural noise assessment projects including the design of residential, office, educational, and commercial buildings. He has also undertaken acoustical studies for major infrastructure developments including work in the design of appropriate sound-fields for room-spaces in multi-occupancy buildings, including atriums and performance spaces. His work regularly involves close liaison with other acoustical engineers, planning consultants, architects, designers, and a variety of specialist environmental consultants.

    Paul is an experienced expert witness within the UK and has a broad experience of planning, licensing and statutory nuisance proceedings as well as being responsible for the successful design of a variety of impact mitigation measures including detailed engineering solutions, lay-out design, and administrative regimes where it has been necessary to closely liaise with clients, designers, and regulatory bodies in order to provide developments in accordance with sustainable principles.

  • Katrina Scherebnyj
    Katrina Scherebnyj

    M.A.Sc., P.Eng., MIOA

    Technical Director, Building Acoustics

    Katrina Scherebnyj

    Katrina Scherebnyj, M.A.Sc., P.Eng., MIOA

    Technical Director, Building Acoustics

    Katrina Scherebnyj started consulting in acoustics in 2007 in England and joined BKL in 2014. Her experience covers architectural acoustics, mechanical noise control, and environmental noise control, and she has worked on major projects in Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

    In architectural acoustics, Katrina has worked on a range of new builds and refurbishment projects including schools, universities and higher education facilities, hospitals and healthcare facilities, performance spaces, cinemas, laboratories, office buildings, hotels, and residential buildings. She has provided acoustical design services in relation to sound insulation, room acoustics, and noise control.

    Katrina was a co-author of Music Accommodation in Secondary Schools: A Design Guide, published for the UK Department for Education in 2010. Researching the guide, she carried out acoustical measurements in the music departments of several schools and interviewed music teachers and students on the suitability of their music spaces.

    Katrina has extensive experience modelling internal sound fields and has carried out numerous models of performance spaces, lecture theatres, and other spaces where acoustical design is critical. She also has experience modelling outdoor noise propagation and has constructed and reviewed noise models for Columbia Containers in Vancouver, BC Children’s and Women’s Hospitals, the Pinnacle (once planned to be London’s tallest building), Crossrail, and other transportation projects.

    Katrina is a member of the Canadian Acoustical Association and the Institute of Acoustics (UK).

  • Henning Schlechtriem
    Henning Schlechtriem

    M.Sc.

    Managing Specialist Acoustical Consultant

    Henning Schlechtriem

    Henning Schlechtriem, M.Sc.

    Managing Specialist Acoustical Consultant

    Henning Schlechtriem, M.Sc., joined BKL in February 2020. He has 8 years of international project experience working as professional acoustical consultant in the design and assessment of residential and non-residential buildings.

    Henning has a Master’s Degree in Acoustics with Environmental Applications and a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering with specialization in building physics and acoustics. His professional expertise focuses on the fields of architectural and environmental acoustics. He is a proficient with software such as Odeon, SoundPLAN, STRUTT, Insul, Rhino+Grasshopper, Max/MSP, and with measurement equipment from Brüel And Kjær, NTi and Norsonic.

    He has worked together with architects, investors, municipalities, as well as structural and mechanical engineers, covering a wide range of projects including office, residential, and mixed-use buildings, hotels, hospitals, schools, and cultural venues. His work has involved the acoustical design and on-site assessment of room acoustics, sound insulation including flanking transmission, environmental noise and noise from building services.

    Henning has given presentations to architects and technical planners to share his knowledge about the acoustical design of masonry, concrete and lightweight constructions, timber-concrete hybrid buildings and general acoustical challenges during the design of buildings.

    He is a member of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akustik, the German Association of Acoustics (DEGA) and is an Approved Assessor for Acoustics and Building Physics at the Chamber of Engineers in NRW and Hessen (Germany).

  • Andrew Williamson
    Andrew Williamson

    P.Eng., B.S.M.E.

    Specialist Acoustical Consultant

    Andrew Williamson

    Andrew Williamson, P.Eng., B.S.M.E.

    Specialist Acoustical Consultant

    A graduate of the University of Victoria, Andrew Williamson holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and has practiced as an acoustical consultant in BC for over two decades. He joined BKL in 2023.

    During his career, Andrew has worked on numerous projects involving environmental noise assessments, building noise and vibration control, and architectural acoustics. As a project manager, Andrew has led acoustics teams on a variety of projects across sectors including cultural and recreation, education and research, health care, industrial, commercial, and residential.

    Andrew has attended public meetings, open houses, and government-sponsored working groups to present and discuss technical information with the public, municipal councils, and members of the government and other organizations. In addition, Andrew has acted as an expert witness in BC Supreme Court and participated in a joint review panel hearing for the environmental assessment of a major infrastructure project.

    Andrew is a Professional Engineer registered with Engineers and Geoscientists BC.

Where We Can Help

From building acoustics and environmental assessments to noise control, sound isolation, and measurement, our services help commercial projects meet acoustical requirements while creating comfortable, functional spaces for occupants and customers.

  • Building Acoustics Design
  • Environmental Noise and Vibration Assessments
  • Noise and Vibration Control
  • Sound and Vibration Measurements
  • Acoustical Predictions and Modelling

In Practice

Case Studies

Great commercial spaces don’t just look the part; they sound right for the people, businesses, and experiences within them.

CBC Regional Broadcast Centre

CBC Regional Broadcast Centre

In 2006, CBC broke ground on an expansion to its downtown Vancouver broadcast centre. The building had originally opened in 1975 and was nicknamed "the bunker" for its concrete-heavy architecture and lack of windows. To balance its earlier industrial leanings and connect more with the community, CBC chose a design that features an open newsroom with plenty of natural light, courtesy of the addition's many windows. BKL was hired to design the acoustics for the expanded newsroom, including the broadcast studio that overlooks busy West Georgia Street. BKL also assessed construction noise and provided recommendations on how to best mitigate this noise during news and radio broadcasts, which would continue during renovations. While the expansion was built, television and radio production continued in the existing wing. But before shovels hit the ground, BKL assessed how construction noise would impact television and radio broadcasts by obtaining real-world data: Acousticians placed instruments in critical areas of the building and measured the transmission of sound from controlled examples of typical construction operations—jackhammering, demolition, dropped loads, etc. At the same time, these field trials gave CBC real-life examples of how construction noise would affect its work; this allowed CBC to plan for the possible disruptions to their broadcast operations. BKL met with the stakeholders to explore various mitigation scenarios, and establish project-specific limits for intruding noise levels. After the assessment, the project team implemented many of BKL's recommended solutions, building additional walls to shield sensitive TV studio areas, cutting concrete slabs to prevent structure-borne noise transmission, and creating a detailed schedule of construction and production activities to minimize disruption. After assessing and providing recommendations to mitigate construction noise, BKL turned its focus to designing the acoustics for the new studio space. One issue was noise from traffic and emergency vehicles intruding into the proposed radio studios and integrated newsroom. The other major concern was controlling noise from renovated and new HVAC and exhaust systems. From this point forward everything became business as usual: meeting with the design team, designing and analyzing the acoustics in-house, writing reports, and reviewing shop drawings. BKL also visited the site to conduct field reviews to confirm the effectiveness of its recommendations. Thanks to BKL's recommendations for limiting disruptive construction noise, CBC continued broadcasting while the expansion was built. For example, the contractor built a temporary wall around the Canada Now studio to allow for normal operations. For the acoustical design component of the project, BKL specified the sound isolation requirements for the building envelope around the newsroom and the radio studios along West Georgia Street. Before installation, a sample of the glazing used for the curtain wall was sent for testing to the acoustical laboratory at University of Alberta to confirm its sound isolation performance. To control noise transmission from the HVAC system to the TV and radio studios, BKL recommended silencers, which were installed with excellent results. To control reverberation, BKL recommended that sound absorptive treatment be installed in the newsroom, radio suites, and editing rooms. According to follow-up measurements, this treatment successfully limited reverberation and reduced overall noise levels in these noise-sensitive areas. Have a project in mind? Get in touch today.

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