Scotland
Acoustic consultants in Edinburgh.
A World Heritage city with a festival economy, which produces acoustic questions almost nowhere else has to answer.
The local picture
What we deal with in Edinburgh.
Edinburgh's Old and New Towns are a World Heritage Site, which constrains external alteration severely. As in York and Bath, that removes the standard mitigation of a replacement facade and pushes the solution inward to secondary glazing, ventilation strategy and layout. Assessments have to be written knowing what the conservation position will allow.
The festival economy creates a genuinely unusual category of work: temporary venues and outdoor events operating at scale for concentrated periods, in a dense residential city. Event noise management plans, propagation modelling and monitoring during operation are all part of it, and the assessment framework is closer to entertainment licensing than to planning.
Scotland's planning system applies, with National Planning Framework 4 as national policy and Scottish Building Standards in place of the Approved Documents. City of Edinburgh Council determines applications across the city.
Typical instructions
Work that comes up here.
Taken from the job book rather than a service list. If yours is not on it, it is still likely to be routine. Send the wording and we will say so.
- Event and festival noise management plans, modelling and monitoring
- Heritage-constrained acoustic design in the Old and New Towns
- Entertainment noise assessment for licensed premises
- Residential conversion noise assessment and sound insulation testing
- Planning noise assessments framed for the Scottish system
Local detail
We read your checklist before we price it.
Validation requirements vary between authorities and between applications. We read the one for yours before quoting, so the scope matches what is being asked for rather than what is usually asked for.
- Determined byCity of Edinburgh Council
- CountyScotland
- Getting to siteAround three and a half hours from Manchester; unattended deployment.
- InstrumentationClass 1, calibrated and certificated
- Fee basisFixed, agreed before we start
- Report turnaroundFive working days from survey
Travel is our problem, not yours. Most surveys use unattended monitoring, so the distance to site affects our costs rather than your programme, and the fee is fixed either way.
What you can instruct
Services available in Edinburgh.
Noise Surveys
Baseline and environmental monitoring, attended or unattended.
Learn moreNoise Impact Assessments
BS 4142, BS 8233 and ProPG assessments that planning officers accept.
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Plant Noise
ASHPs, chillers, kitchen extract and refrigeration, assessed against background.
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Sound Insulation Testing
Pre-completion testing to Approved Document E, scheduled around handover.
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Construction Noise & Vibration
BS 5228 assessments, Section 61 consents, CEMPs and site monitoring.
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Vibration Surveys
Human response to BS 6472, structural damage risk to BS 7385.
Learn moreQuestions
Edinburgh: common questions.
Do you assess festival and event noise?
Yes. It needs propagation modelling to the surrounding residential area, a noise management plan setting out limits and controls, and monitoring during the event itself. The framework is closer to licensing than to planning, and the local authority will normally want the plan agreed in advance.
How do World Heritage constraints affect an assessment?
They usually rule out replacing or altering the facade, which is the ordinary way of achieving internal noise targets. The solution moves to secondary glazing behind the original windows, the ventilation route and internal layout, and the assessment has to demonstrate the targets are met that way.
Working on something in Edinburgh?
Send a postcode and a sentence. We're ready to price it right now.