The Challenge
In an industry where milliseconds can mean millions, a leading Tier-1 bank sought to construct a state-of-the-art trading floor that would seamlessly integrate advanced technology and ensure high resilience. A critical requirement was achieving acoustic isolation to prevent any disruptions from external noise, ensuring an uninterrupted, fork focused trading environment. Furthermore, the space needed to be highly adaptable to future technological advancements and evolving business requirements. The existing building constraints posed additional challenges, necessitating a precise and innovative BIM approach to design and coordination.
The Solution
Adyantrix was engaged to deliver a comprehensive BIM solution tailored to meet these stringent requirements. Our team embarked on a detailed assessment of the project's needs and restrictions, leveraging state-of-the-art Revit modeling tools and BIM methodologies.
Acoustic Isolation: Our acoustic engineers collaborated closely with the design team to conceive a bespoke solution that incorporated advanced materials and structural configurations, ensuring minimal noise intrusion. By simulating various noise scenarios using BIM models, we could optimise the design to maintain sound levels well below targeted thresholds.
Resilient Infrastructure: We incorporated a multi-tiered approach to design, ensuring that the trading floor's infrastructure could withstand potential disruptions related to power failure or technological advancements. This involved the integration of alternative power sources and highly resilient network architecture, seamlessly dovetailed through the BIM model.
BIM Coordination and Clash Detection: Utilising clash detection tools, we identified and resolved over 150 potential conflicts early in the design phase, optimising building systems' integration and ensuring the project's timeline remained on track.
Advanced Technical Integration: To future-proof the trading floor, we embedded flexibility into the designs for data networking layouts and cybersecurity considerations. The tailored BIM strategies ensured seamless integration with the bank's existing systems.
Key Results
The adoption of BIM for this project led to significant improvements in design accuracy, coordination, and delivery speed. As a result:
- The project achieved a 15% reduction in construction time due to enhanced planning and conflict resolution.
- Acoustic testing confirmed that noise levels were consistently maintained at 30% below the industry standard for trading floors, ensuring an ideal environment for high-concentration tasks.
- The resilient infrastructure design decreased potential downtime by 40%, thanks to redundant power and communication systems incorporated into the layout.
- The bank reported increased trader productivity and satisfaction as a direct result of the optimised environment, with trading performance metrics improving by 20% in the first quarter following completion.
By leveraging Adyantrix's expertise in BIM and our comprehensive approach to design challenges, the leading Tier-1 bank now benefits from an acoustically isolated, resilient trading floor that stands as a benchmark in the financial industry.
Technical Approach
The trading floor environment imposed technical requirements that went well beyond those of a standard commercial fit-out. Autodesk Revit was used as the primary BIM authoring tool across all disciplines, with the acoustic model developed as a dedicated discipline federate in Navisworks to allow the acoustic consultant to manage their lining geometry and room-within-a-room configurations independently from the main architectural model.
The acoustic isolation strategy centred on a box-in-box construction approach: the trading floor slab was isolated from the host building structure using anti-vibration neoprene pads modelled in Revit with precise load-path data provided by the structural engineer. Wall and ceiling assemblies incorporated proprietary resilient bar systems and independent leaf construction, each modelled to LOD 350 to capture the critical air gaps that determine acoustic performance. All penetrations through acoustic barriers—for power, data, and HVAC—were coordinated in the BIM model with acoustic-rated sealing products specified at the point of modelling.
For the resilient power infrastructure, the raised-floor void was modelled at LOD 400 to accommodate dual-feed UPS distribution boards, A+B power circuits to every trading position, and a high-density structured cabling environment. The raised floor void depth—a constrained 450 mm—required precise stacking of cable containment, power distribution, and under-floor HVAC plenum routing without creating maintenance access conflicts. We produced dedicated cross-sectional cut views from the Revit model for every major service intersection point, which were issued as construction information directly from the model rather than re-drawn as 2D details.
Implementation Highlights
The project faced an unusual constraint: the trading floor occupied floors seven and eight of an occupied building, meaning construction works had to proceed without disrupting adjacent banking operations. This informed every aspect of the BIM coordination strategy, from sequencing decisions to the choice of dry-lining systems over wet trades wherever acoustic performance standards allowed.
During the detailed design stage, the most complex coordination challenge was the raised-floor service zone. Trading floors operate at extremely high data cable densities—typically 12 to 16 structured cabling runs per trading position—and this project accommodated 240 trading positions on the principal floor plate. The resulting cable volume, combined with dual-feed power distribution and under-floor cooling connections, created a three-dimensional routing puzzle within the constrained void depth. We resolved this through a structured zoning strategy: power containment was allocated to the northern half of the void depth, data containment to the southern half, with cooling pipework routed in a central corridor. This zoning was enforced through model-based checking scripts developed in Dynamo, which automatically flagged any element placed outside its designated zone during design reviews.
The shielding requirements for the dealing room—both electromagnetic screening for the bank's trading systems and physical security shielding for regulatory compliance—were coordinated through dedicated shielding layers in the Revit model, ensuring that no penetrations were introduced without going through a formal change management process that logged the breach location, shielding reinstatement method, and responsible party.
Measurable Outcomes
The 40% reduction in potential downtime represented the most commercially significant outcome for the bank. Prior to the redesign, the trading floor's single-feed power infrastructure had experienced two unplanned outages in the preceding 36 months, each requiring a floor evacuation and resulting in an estimated six-figure trading revenue impact per event. The BIM-coordinated dual-feed A+B power architecture, combined with the specification of modular UPS units sized for N+1 redundancy, eliminated the single points of failure that had caused both incidents.
The acoustic results also exceeded the original brief. The target specification was a Noise Rating (NR) curve of NR35 within the trading environment when adjacent floors were occupied at normal business density. Post-construction acoustic testing returned a measured NR curve of NR24—a performance level typically associated with broadcast studios rather than trading environments—which the bank's trading floor management team cited as a direct contributor to the 20% improvement in trading performance metrics.
The 150 clash events resolved in BIM included 23 conflicts that were classified as critical: scenarios where a service installation would have penetrated an acoustic barrier without an appropriate rated seal, compromising the entire room acoustic performance. Identifying and resolving these in the digital model rather than on site avoided both the remedial cost and the programme delay that acoustic remediation behind finished surfaces would have entailed.
Lessons Learned
The most important technical lesson from this project concerned the sequencing of acoustic and services coordination. On earlier projects of this type, acoustic lining designs were sometimes finalised after the services routing had been fixed, creating situations where acoustic seals had to be retrofitted around already-installed containment. On this project, we reversed the sequence: acoustic barrier positions were fixed first in the BIM model, and all services were routed through designated penetration zones with acoustic seals specified at the point of routing. This sequencing produced a cleaner, more maintainable installation and avoided the ad hoc penetration repairs that are common on trading floor fit-outs.
We also learned that the financial sector's security and compliance requirements necessitate a more structured BIM change management process than is typical on commercial fit-out projects. Every change to the shielding configuration or the UPS distribution layout required a documented rationale and sign-off from the bank's technical director. By embedding this change management workflow into the BIM issue management system from day one, we maintained a complete, auditable record of every design decision—a requirement that became valuable when the bank's internal audit team reviewed the project following completion.
Why This Approach Worked
The success of this project derived from recognising that a trading floor BIM engagement is fundamentally different from a standard commercial office fit-out, even when the host building looks similar from the outside. The acoustic, resilience, and security requirements each impose constraints that interact with one another in complex ways: achieving acoustic isolation through box-in-box construction affects structural load distribution; resilient power infrastructure requires additional void space that reduces under-floor cooling capacity; shielding requirements constrain the locations of penetrations that services coordination might otherwise treat as flexible routing opportunities.
By building a single federated BIM model that captured all of these constraints simultaneously—rather than addressing them as separate specialist packages with a 2D overlay coordination process—Adyantrix ensured that trade-offs between competing requirements were resolved explicitly and early, with every decision documented and shared across the full project team. For a Tier-1 bank whose trading floor represents a critical revenue-generating asset, that level of design rigour was not a luxury—it was a commercial necessity.
Speak with our BIM Consulting team at Adyantrix to find out how we can support your next project.
Work with Adyantrix
If you are looking to tackle a similar challenge, Adyantrix has the expertise to help across the full project lifecycle. Our BIM consulting practice covers BEP authoring, ISO 19650 strategy, and CDE implementation. Our architectural BIM practice covers Revit modelling from concept through construction documentation. Our structural BIM practice covers structural modelling, analysis exports, and fabrication detail. Our clash detection & coordination practice covers multidisciplinary coordination and conflict resolution. Get in touch to discuss your requirements — no commitment required.
