Trus Joist is rolling out a new design service which aims to ensure national housebuilders have uniform floor plans for using the Silent Floor System with standard house types.
The company’s recently-created group design solutions department, which works in tandem with designers at Trus Joist Master Dealers, also aims to tackle design challenges created by changes in the building regulations.
Department manager Peter Law said: “The idea of the department is that if you have a standard house type built in the north-west or south-east, the builder will get the same floor designs.”
Mr Law said builders were concerned about issues such as land prices, planning and skills shortages, not whether they use a specific type of floor frame. He said they wanted to “specify it and forget it”, and enjoy trouble-free consistent performance.
He said the design service, which was piloted last year with Wimpey Southern Ltd, allowed national housebuilders to develop and fine-tune core house types to improve build efficiency.
Trus Joist’s development of a data mining software programme allows the Hopwood-based department to analyse the effects of changes in building regulations on floor designs, thereby saving developers time needed to make alterations to their house designs.
One example was the department’s analysis of more than 800 floor designs to check the affect of the NHBC‘s new requirement that engineered floor joist deflection must not exceed 12mm.
