Specialist Shielding and Protection Systems

Protection Against a Second Category of Risk

Conventional physical security answers a single question: can an attacker get in? For an increasing number of facilities that question is no longer sufficient. A command and control centre can be rendered inoperable by an electromagnetic pulse released hundreds of kilometres away. A confidential conversation can leave a secure room through a ceiling void or a window. An MRI scanner will not produce a usable image if radio frequency interference reaches it. A laboratory containment failure is measured in air permeability, not forced entry resistance.

Our specialist shielding division addresses that second category of risk. It sits alongside more than 30 years of experience supplying independently certified high security architectural products, which means shielded openings, blast performance, fire compartmentation and attack resistance can be resolved as a single design problem rather than parcelled out to separate suppliers who meet for the first time on site.

EMP Shielding and Electromagnetic Pulse Protection

Electromagnetic Pulse Protection prevents the pulse from a high yield nuclear detonation, or from a non-nuclear pulse weapon, from disrupting or destroying the electronic equipment inside a building. The threat requires no proximity and no forced entry, which places it outside the scope of every conventional security measure.

Protection depends on treating the shield as a continuous conductive envelope in which every point of entry is addressed to an equivalent standard. That includes personnel doors, ventilation openings, power feeds, data and signal cabling, and every service penetration crossing the boundary. A single untreated aperture compromises the attenuation achieved everywhere else.

We provide modular EMP shielded rooms and cabinets, shielded doors, steel honeycomb waveguide ventilation vents, and line protection systems combining surge diversion with high performance EMI filtering. Shielded cabinets and containers can be configured from desktop scale to walk in, and fitted out with racking, shock mounts, ventilation, power distribution and thermal insulation.

Electromagnetic and RF Shielding

Electromagnetic shielding covers a broader set of requirements than pulse protection alone, ranging from electromagnetic compatibility test facilities through to whole building interference control.

Modular Shielded Rooms and Faraday Cages

Turnkey design, fabrication and installation of modular shielded rooms, EMC chambers and anechoic chambers. Prefabricated galvanised steel panel construction allows almost unlimited size and configuration, with finishes ranging from a conventional office interior through to microwave absorbers forming a semi anechoic or fully anechoic chamber. Rooms are completed with shielded doors, shielded windows, pipe penetrations and RF filters.

RF Shielded Doors

The door is the most important element of any shielded facility, and the one most dependent on design and build quality. We provide shielded doors for all performance levels and applications, internal and external, including doors for mobile containers and anechoic chambers. Where the opening must perform against more than one threat, doors can combine RF shielding with fire resistance and with thermal, acoustic, NBC and blast protection.

Architectural Shielding

Where the shield must follow the building rather than sit inside it, architectural shielding bonds suitable materials directly to the host structure. Copper and aluminium foils and steel sheet are the common choices, with the required attenuation, frequency range and budget determining the material and installation method. Careful design and selection of apertures is what converts material performance into achieved performance.

Power Frequency Magnetic Field Shielding

Magnetic fields generated by electrical distribution systems, electromagnets and motors can disrupt sensitive equipment and cause concern in occupied buildings. PFMF shielding works by diverting and deflecting the field away from the affected area. Because fields flow around a partial shield, the extent of the shield matters as much as the material, and the required attenuation level is the critical design input. Applications include commercial premises, industrial test areas and residential developments adjacent to distribution infrastructure.

Data Centre Shielding

Data centres face an unusual combination of exposure. Alongside electronic eavesdropping risk, they are vulnerable to electromagnetic surges from both nuclear EMP and Intentional Electromagnetic Interference, or IEMI, generated by non-nuclear devices. Either can disrupt or permanently destroy processing and storage hardware. We provide protection against conducted and radiated interference, integrated with the building fabric and with every service entering the facility.

MRI Medical Shielding

An MRI scanner cannot produce diagnostic quality images unless it sits within a room shielded against radio frequency interference. We provide RF shielding for MRI examination rooms in the form of a copper clad Faraday cage, built to meet the requirements of the major scanner manufacturers.

The installation includes acoustic insulation, shielded electrical power and data cabling, and filtering of all services crossing the shield. RF shielded doors and MRI viewing windows are supplied as part of the same package. The window uses two layers of blackened mesh set at a precise relative angle to deliver the required shielding without introducing the visual distortion known as Fresnel interference.

We also design and install the associated helium quench pipe systems, and can carry out site vibration and magnetic field fluctuation surveys before construction begins to confirm that ground conditions fall within the scanner manufacturer's stated limits.

Attack, Blast and Gas Protection

This capability area is where the specialist shielding division meets Premier Security's established strengths in physical protection.

Gas Tight and Air Tight Doors

Sealed doorsets for bio-hazard laboratories, nuclear and blast protected bunkers, water treatment facilities, hospitals, military buildings and research establishments. Seal options range from neoprene for frequently cycled air lock chambers through to EPDM rubber where resistance to toxic chemicals is required. Locking options extend from conventional key operation to electro-mechanical access with auto deadlocking and electronic monitoring.

Blast Valves

Where a protected envelope requires high airflow, blast valves provide inlet and exhaust ventilation that closes on the arrival of a blast wave and again during the reverse pressure phase, returning to the open position once the event has passed. Valves are fitted into wall frames as modules and can be installed vertically or horizontally. Configurations can be tailored to add electromagnetic pulse protection and debris protection to the same unit.

Attack Resistant Doors with RF Shielding

Doorsets that combine certified forced entry resistance with radio frequency attenuation, for facilities where a secure opening also has to hold the shield. Acoustic performance can be specified alongside. Certified security ratings, tested locking configurations and permitted dimensional ranges are set out on the product page, and every performance claim is supported by its own test evidence rather than inferred from an adjacent one.

Sound Masking and Eavesdropping Protection

Speech privacy is the one shielding requirement that most building designs overlook entirely, and the one occupants notice fastest. Sound masking introduces a specifically tailored low level electronic sound at the position of the unintentional listener, raising the background level so that the peaks of a distant conversation become harder to discern and, past a short distance, unintelligible.

Effective acoustic design combines three elements: absorbing sound with acoustic ceilings and wall panels, blocking it with partitions and walls, and covering what remains with background sound. Masking addresses the third, and is frequently the only one of the three still available once a building is occupied. Systems use a network of ceiling mounted emitters driven by a zoned processor, and can be installed in new build or retrofitted. Paging and background music can be integrated into the same infrastructure.

For secure rooms in the defence, government and legal sectors the requirement moves from privacy to interception resistance. Viewed as a six sided enclosure, the breach points of most rooms are readily identified: windows exposed to laser listening devices, ductwork channelling sound to adjacent spaces, doors, utility penetrations, access floor voids and the space above suspended ceilings. Each can be treated with products selected for that specific path.

Testing, Surveys and Commissioning

Shielding performance is a measured property, not a design assumption, and the gap between specified and achieved attenuation is where most shielding projects fail. We provide testing and survey services across the full project lifecycle.

• Pre-installation electromagnetic field surveys to quantify background field strengths and establish the appropriate attenuation target
• Site vibration and magnetic field fluctuation surveys for MRI installations
• Shielding effectiveness testing of completed facilities to recognised international standards
• Pulse injection testing of EMPP filters to applicable NATO military standards
• Air permeability pressure testing of gas tight doorsets
• Sound masking system tuning and verification following installation
• Remedial assessment and proposals for existing shielding installations

Where a project has no defined attenuation specification at the outset, which is common, an initial site survey establishes the baseline from which a realistic and testable performance requirement can be written.

Why Specify Through Premier Security

Facilities that warrant shielding almost always warrant physical protection as well, and the two are usually procured separately. The result is predictable: conflicting details at every opening, a shielded door that will not accept the required lock, a blast valve that breaches the electromagnetic envelope, and a commissioning programme where nobody owns the interfaces.

Premier Security has spent more than 30 years supplying independently certified high security architectural products to architects, security consultants, specifiers, main contractors and government procurement teams. Bringing shielding into that same supply route means the openings are designed once, against all their performance requirements together.

Where a project also calls for certified attack resistance to LPS 1175, blast performance to ISO 16933, bullet resistance to EN 1522/1523 and EN 1063, or hostile vehicle mitigation to ISO 22343-1:2023, those requirements are met through our independently certified product ranges and coordinated with the shielding envelope from the outset.

Sectors We Support

• Defence establishments and military communications facilities
• Government estates, command and control centres and secure meeting rooms
• Critical national infrastructure, including energy, water and telecommunications
• Data centres and government and defence-adjacent compute facilities
• Healthcare, including MRI suites and diagnostic imaging departments
• Research establishments, universities and bio-hazard laboratories
• Financial, legal and corporate environments requiring speech privacy
• Emergency services control rooms and resilience centres

Specialist Shielding FAQs