Glenair Mansfield: Office Fit-Out and Factory Acoustic Strategy

Glenair is a global aerospace and defence connector and interconnect-system manufacturer, headquartered in California with subsidiaries and manufacturing sites across Europe and Asia. The Mansfield, Nottinghamshire site is part of Glenair UK's manufacturing footprint, combining engineering office functions with production hall operations under a single roof. Eastledge delivered two distinct interior fit-out scopes on a single contract: a contemporary office environment for the engineering and management teams, and an acoustic strategy for the factory floor that would reduce reverberation across the production hall.

The brief

Two parallel briefs running under one contract, each with its own specification logic and programme constraints.

The office brief called for a contemporary ceiling finish suited to engineering and management functions: a premium specification that would distinguish the office environment from a standard commercial fit-out, integrating cleanly with luminaires and services and producing a refined, professional working interior.

The factory acoustic brief was more time-critical. Production environments combine high reverberation (large volumes, hard structural surfaces, exposed roof structure) with continuous machinery noise. That combination produces sustained working sound levels capable of contributing to operator fatigue, communication difficulty and long-term hearing risk. The acoustic strategy needed to be designed and installed before the production line was commissioned: once machinery was in place, the access required to suspend over 900 baffles from the roof structure would no longer exist. The factory install was a one-shot window, measured in weeks, and the programme had to be built around it.

What we did

Office fit-out: Zentia Ultima OP with 15 mm Silhouette grid

The office ceilings were specified in Zentia Ultima OP, a high-performance mineral fibre tile in the upper Zentia range, installed in a 15 mm Silhouette grid with a black reveal. The Silhouette grid is a narrow-line exposed grid system: instead of the standard 24 mm white T-bar that defines most commercial ceiling specifications, the Silhouette uses a 15 mm grid section with a recessed reveal channel that drops the visible grid line below the tile face. The black reveal exposes the recess as a fine architectural shadow line between tiles, lifting the ceiling visually clear of the grid and producing a finish closer to a series of floating panels than a traditional gridded ceiling.

The Ultima OP tile contributes Class A absorption and supports the wider acoustic strategy of the office environment, while the black reveal grid integrates cleanly with recessed luminaires, perimeter trims and services penetrations. Our scope included setting out, perimeter trims, integration with luminaires, services penetrations and the partition heads against which the ceiling abuts.

Factory acoustic strategy: over 900 Ecophon Solo baffles

We installed over 900 Ecophon Solo acoustic baffles in the production hall, suspended on hanging wires from the structural roof. Solo baffles are vertical absorbers: flat acoustic units oriented edge-down, exposing absorption on both faces. They are manufactured around an Ecophon high-density glass wool core with a glass fleece facing. The two-face exposure gives very high effective absorption per unit of floor area, which is the right intervention in a high-volume industrial space where the absorber is competing with hard structural surfaces and continuous noise sources.

Working from MEWP and access platforms, the team set out the baffle grid against the structural roof, fitted hangers, and suspended the baffles to a coordinated layout that distributed absorption broadly across the production volume. Once installed, the baffles allow the production line to move freely below them, services to remain visible above, and any future machinery reconfiguration to proceed without disturbing the acoustic envelope.

How we worked

The two scopes ran in parallel under a single contract, which required the programme to be managed across two operationally distinct environments within the same building. The office installation followed the rhythm of the wider fit-out: coordinated with services, decoration and partition works, progressing zone by zone as the building was brought to a finished state.

The factory install was planned and executed as a discrete programme event. The access window before machinery commissioning was fixed, and the baffle layout, fixing grid and installation sequence were resolved in advance so that the team could work efficiently from MEWP across the full production hall volume within the available time. The same supervision team managed both scopes, providing a single accountable interface for the client and main contractor throughout.

Outcome

A combined fit-out delivering two coordinated environments under a single contract. The office space achieves a clean, modern aesthetic suited to engineering and management functions, with the 15 mm Silhouette grid and black reveal lifting the ceiling visually above the standard commercial benchmark. The factory acoustic strategy contributes to a healthier working environment under continuous machinery operation, with broad-spectrum absorption distributed across the production hall volume.

The project demonstrates Eastledge's twin specialism: high-specification commercial ceiling fit-out and industrial-scale acoustic installation, delivered by a single team under a single accountable contract.

What this project demonstrates

Glenair Mansfield is one of our reference projects for two reasons. First, the Ecophon Solo baffle install is one of the largest single-project industrial acoustic installations in our recent portfolio: a documented data point against which we scope future industrial acoustic enquiries. Second, the project demonstrates the value of running ceiling and acoustic specialisms inside the same contractor. The office Ultima OP install and the factory Solo baffle install were programmed, supervised and delivered by the same team, with a single accountable interface for the client and main contractor.

Related industrial and acoustic work: industrial sector page. More manufacturing and acoustic baffle case studies coming soon.