Dedatek: 25 years of acoustic engineering

Telling the story of an engineering firm's 25 years does not end with listing the number of completed projects or the customers won. The real story is hidden within that long and quiet process of learning that stretches from the mistakes made on the first day to today's application discipline. As Dedatek Yapı & İzolasyon, as we leave a quarter-century behind us and look back over the past years, what we see is exactly this: how a journey that began with seeking a solution to a reverberation problem in a small workshop has, today, turned into an engineering organisation delivering projects in 81 provinces.

In this article we wanted to share our 25 years of experience not in grand sentences, but by recounting, as witnesses, the periods we passed through, the lessons we learned, and the change the sector underwent.

The Beginning: A Need Turning into an Engineering Discipline

In the early 2000s, when we laid the foundations of Dedatek, what came to mind in Turkey when "acoustics" was mentioned was mostly a few pieces of foam stuck to studio walls and hearsay solution suggestions. There was no sectoral discipline; the concepts of scientific measurement, simulation and certified material were on the agenda of only a handful of academics. In the field, meanwhile, the problem was large: vibration leaking from the generator room to the neighbouring apartment, sound scattered in the office open plan, uncontrolled reverberation in the cinema hall...

A significant proportion of the projects we carried out in the early years arose from this gap. On the one hand we analysed the complaints customers brought to us as a "sound problem," and on the other we researched which standards were valid in the world, and which material gave what response in which frequency range. The mistakes we made in our early-period projects formed the real foundation of today's engineering culture. Because every wrong application taught us something: we needed to measure instead of guess, and to let data speak instead of slogans.

The First Turning Point: Measurement Devices Come into Play

One of our most critical decisions as a company was to invest in professional sound measurement devices and simulation software in the fifth year of our founding. At the time, this investment figure was too large for a small team to bear. But it was also impossible to do engineering in a field where you could not take measurements. In the first days that we took our acoustic analysis devices out into the field, the hesitation in customers' eyes slowly began to turn into trust.

Because we no longer said "we will achieve a reduction of so many dB here"; we measured in the field, reported, and after application measured again and documented the difference. A commitment based on measurement rather than guesswork became, for us, not an advertising line but a daily way of doing business. To this day, in every project whose application we complete, we continue the same discipline: before-and-after measurement, a written outcome report, and a repeat visit when needed.

The Certification Journey: Documenting the Invisible

It is not possible to evaluate acoustic material visually. Two panels may look exactly alike, yet one may carry an NRC value of 0.85 while the other remains at 0.30. The density of a barrier membrane, the fibre structure of a felt, the non-combustibility class of a foam - these cannot be proven without a certificate. For this reason, over time we built a strict policy in supplier selection.

Today, almost all of the materials we apply consist of products tested to international standards. Documents such as the BS 476 Class 0 non-combustibility certificate, UNI 9175 Class 1IM fire behaviour, and the EN ISO 354 sound absorption coefficient test are no longer a marketing element for us, but a condition for sitting down at the table. If a material has not passed these tests, it has no place in our project. This determination occasionally created a cost disadvantage for us compared with cheap alternatives; but in the long run it came back, on the contrary, as customer loyalty and a growth in referrals.

More Than 500 Projects, Field Experience in 81 Provinces

For an Istanbul-based firm to be able to serve all the provinces of Turkey is a serious matter logistically. In 25 years we have completed more than 500 projects, and these projects took us to very different sites, from the country's smallest district to its largest metropolis. We carried out boat engine compartment sound insulation at a Black Sea port; we performed the acoustic treatment of a hospital's intensive care unit in the Southeast; we designed the room insulation project of a boutique hotel on the Aegean coast; we engineered the chiller room vibration isolation of a large data centre in the Marmara region.

Working on such a wide variety of sites requires a field intuition beyond textbook knowledge. What builds that bridge between the screwdriver and the device has been the small details accumulated over the years: how the choice of material changes according to a region's humidity, the effect of the load-bearing system on the acoustic mass distribution in old buildings, the vibration transmission routes in modern light steel construction... This accumulation is written in no book; it is learned only over the years, in the field.

The Changing Face of the Sector and Our Adaptation

In the early 2000s, when acoustics was mentioned, it was understood to mean "sound insulation" alone. Today our customers demand far more varied services from us: masking systems for speech privacy in open-office spaces, a realistic vocal recording environment in podcast studios, emission values compliant with environmental regulations in generator rooms, acoustic comfort parameters in the hospital environment...

The sector changed, and so did we. While 25 years ago our product range in the catalogue did not exceed the fingers of two hands, today we produce solutions in over 100 service and product headings. Acoustic foam, acoustic panels, sound insulation barriers, floor damping, acoustic ceilings, door-and-window systems, industrial acoustic cabins - each category is a separate world with its own technical depth. The secret to our being able to manage this diversity is specialisation. Each engineer on our team has gone deep in particular areas; yet they all speak the same common language.

The Turnkey Model: One Point of Contact, One Responsibility

One of the most frequent pieces of feedback we hear from our customers has been "being able to solve everything from a single source." Over the years we built a business model that responds to this need: from survey to measurement, from design to material supply, from application to the outcome report, we run the entire process with our own staff. The customer is not forced to manage different parties such as an acoustician, a subcontractor, a material supplier and a measurement provider; they have a single point of contact, and ultimately the single party responsible is also Dedatek.

The greatest advantage of this model is that it leaves no gap in the chain of responsibility. When the expected result is not reached, there is no chance to utter sentences such as "we supplied the material, the application is not ours." Because we do both the engineering and the application. Building this model in the early years was not easy; training the right team, forming the right supplier network, and setting up teams that would work with discipline in the field took years. Yet today it is one of the strongest aspects of our 25-year organisation.

Speaking with Data: A Science-Based Approach

Because acoustic engineering, viewed from the outside, looks like "let's put something in and the noise will drop," it is frequently misunderstood. In reality it is a discipline in which measurable parameters such as frequency bands, sound transmission losses, transmission paths, room modes and reverberation times are managed. The right solution for one room may not work in another, and may even make the problem worse.

For this reason, our most fundamental rule from the start has been: a unique analysis for every project. We do not use ready-made templates; we measure and calculate the space's volume proportions, existing surface materials, intended use, expected occupancy and target performance, and then design the solution accordingly. Professional simulation software such as ODEON, EASE and INSUL are now our daily working tools. Behind the report we present to the customer there is always scientific data.

Remembered Projects: The Stories Behind the Numbers

Each of the more than 500 projects carried a learning experience of its own. Some were technically demanding, some operationally complex, and some left their mark in an emotional sense. There are a few works still mentioned years later when we talk as a team.

The acoustic treatment we completed at a state hospital in a small district of Anatolia was one of these. In the intensive care unit, the stress created by alarm sounds was both delaying patients' recovery and breaking the staff's concentration. When we took measurements, we found the noise level to be nearly twice the internationally accepted limits. With the acoustic ceiling and wall systems we designed, we brought the ambient sound level under control. A few months later, a thank-you message sent by the hospital's chief physician is still in our archive as one of the most valuable pieces of feedback we have received since our founding.

A large production studio's film mixing room is also among the unforgettable ones. Designing a control room compliant with world standards acoustically meant fitting all the knowledge accumulated over the years into a single project. After balancing dozens of parameters in simulation - reverberation time measurements, first-reflection control, low-frequency traps, monitor positioning - we moved to application. On opening day, the sound engineer's sentence, "now I can hear the real mix," was one of those moments where engineering touched art.

Investing in People: The Real Capital of 25 Years

The value of an engineering firm comes not from the equipment it owns or the size of its office, but from a staff that has accumulated experience in the field. At Dedatek, this accumulation has been our greatest wealth. Today some of the engineers and applicators on our team are people who have witnessed the company's 15-20 year past. At the same time, we are continually training new-graduate engineers and young technicians, keeping the transfer of knowledge between generations alive.

In the in-house training programmes we run, every new colleague goes through a certain grounding in measurement methodology, material knowledge, customer communication and application discipline before going out into the field. What we obtain at the end of this process is a homogeneous service quality. That there is no quality difference between an application a Dedatek team carries out in Istanbul and one it carries out in Diyarbakır is the natural result of this systematic investment in people.

Looking to the Future: The Importance of Silence Is Growing

As the density of cities increases, as buildings become lighter, and as living spaces shrink, people's need for silence also grows. We are in a period in which the World Health Organization has, in recent years, addressed noise exposure as a public health problem. The productivity of office workers, the recovery time of hospital patients, the learning performance of children; all are directly related to acoustic comfort.

We foresee the sector developing in three directions in the coming period: first, the binding of structural acoustic standards more tightly to legal regulation; second, the spread of sustainable and recyclable acoustic materials; and third, digital measurement and simulation tools becoming more accessible. As Dedatek, we are ready in all three directions: we follow the standards, we are expanding our eco-friendly product portfolio, and we are continually updating our technological infrastructure.

The Summary of 25 Years: Silence Is an Engineering Discipline

When we look back, Dedatek's 25-year story is, in fact, a small mirror of the maturation process of acoustic engineering in Turkey. The sound problems that in the early years people tried to solve with hearsay methods have today attained the discipline of measurement, calculation, simulation and certified application. We are proud to be both a witness to and a part of this transformation.

The more than 500 projects we have completed and the 81 provinces we have served are each a numerical datum. But the real success behind these numbers is the return of the customers who trusted us throughout this period, the new projects that come by referral, and the long-term business partnerships in which we continue to work together for years. A customer we have worked with once calling us again is the most valuable feedback for an engineering firm. To deserve this, we have maintained the same discipline for 25 years.

In the coming decades we will continue with the same approach: to measure before guessing, to calculate before committing, and to document with a report after application. Because silence is not a slogan but an engineering discipline; and we are a team that has internalised this discipline for 25 years.

We thank all our customers, our business partners and, of course, our team who are part of the Dedatek family. In the next quarter-century too, we will carry on the road with the same meticulousness, the same measurement device, and the same report.