When Knight-Ridder was planning to move over 500 employees from three locations into one open office facility they looked to Lencore to help them with their sound masking needs.

Profile of Knight-Ridder Information, Inc.
Mountain View, CA

• Move 500+ employees from 3 locations to one, open-office facility
• 20%+ increase in productivity; sales increases
• Space requirements cut by one-third

Because the instrusive sound of people talking is the most serious open-office acoustical problem, and one of the hardest to control, Facility Manager Paul De Groot put sound masking at the top of his list of seven key objectives for ensuring success at the new facility.

“After lengthy research, we found Lencore’s system to be the best available on the market,” says De Groot. “The cost of roughly $1.00 per square foot (furnished and installed) was not significant when compared to the increases we realized in productivity.”

Years later, Knight-Ridder Information employees continue to maintain a balance between privacy and interaction. “Our open-office plan works, and our success story could not have been written without the use of sound masking. Sound masking was by far the most important aspect of the project’s successful implementation.”