Edinburgh Napier University has received royal recognition for its collaborative research in to noise insulation involving the house building industry.

The research has helped revolutionise new-home building practices and standards and led to the establishment of the Robust Details scheme, benefiting hundreds of thousands of new homes owners and the house building industry alike.

The research was initially instigated following suggestions made to Government that all new build homes should be subject to mandatory sound testing. It established how best to deal with sound transmission problems between buildings and ultimately allowed the development of a registration scheme and sound insulation 'pattern book' that developers could use to meet the standards set out in building regulations. Upon completion of the research project, the scheme has been run by Robust Details Limited (RDL), and means builders registering their homes with RDL are not subject to on-site pre-completion sound testing.

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The RDL scheme shows how an efficient and effective industry scheme can be developed, removing the need for Government to impose prescriptive regulation. Ultimately, its success has been demonstrated by a huge drop in customer complaints about noise in new homes.

The Robust Details project was one of the largest and most intensive research projects ever undertaken between a university and the house building industry. It was funded by the Home Builders' Federation and many of the country's biggest house builders,

Stewart Baseley, Executive Chairman of the Home Builders Federation said: "The success of this industry-funded scheme, and the benefits it has bought to hundreds of thousands of new home owners, as well as house builders, powerfully demonstrates the innovatory advantages of the industry working together to develop its own solutions rather than having regulation imposed. This experience has given us a template for the future in terms of developing and mainstreaming means of providing good quality homes in the most efficient way, so delivering an improved product for our customers as affordably as possible."

(CD/GK)