In the first year a lot work has been done in the field of technical scaling. We have been researching the possibilities of manufacturing a WHIS®stone out of Self Compacting Concrete, which turned out to be very expensive with very limited advantages. Furthermore we completely worked out the scaling up of the production of the WHIS®wall. On technical part there is a lot or research conducted on the usage of alternative materials, which has led to new products, product designs and sustainability advantages. All relevant for the commercial position of 4Silence.
In Belgium, Germany and Denmark we have done pilot projects. In Belgium this was done with the Belgium Road Research Center and the Flemish Road Authority at the N445 near Zele, where 150 meters of WHISwall was installed. The noise reduction measurement results on site were excellent (10dB on average). These measurement on site were extended with some additional measurements at our Test facility in Enschede (NL) in june 2020, where the results were similar. The pilot in Germany, together with Deutsche Bahn, is part of the I-Lena program. This program's goal is to find cost effective solutions for the reduction of Railway Noise. In this program there is an independent notified body that executes all the noise reduction measurements. The measurement results of the Deutsche Bahn (DB) are promising as well, which has led to the ambition of DB to add Diffraction to the SCHALL03 model. For the German roads several measurements were executed by the German Federal Highway Institute (BAST). In all situations the results were as expected, leading to the necessary approval by BAST for application next to the German roads. Last but not least, there was a pilot done in Denmark near Vallensbaek.
In addition to the actual pilots, also a lot acoustic simulations were done in this project. The most complex simulation was done by the Center for Modelling and Simulation from the UK to determine the effect of the WHIS®top in a high speed railway environment (360 km/h). The results show that the height of the noise barriers can be reduced with 2 meters, by simply replacing that height with a WHIS®top.
To achieve our goal we have also been very busy building our network to make arrangements for new pilots with new infrastructure owners. we have been in contact with over 1300 companies and more than 2000 people throughout Europe (and beyond). Next to building the network ourselves, we contracted sales partners in Belgium, UK, France and Denmark. Due to the COVID19 pandemic we had to make a change to our approach, which actually made it more effective. There was almost no travelling and a lot of online meetings, which makes it more easy to talk to more people.
To improve our reach we developed a new communication strategy and started implementing it. This new strategy contains the development of a new website, brochure, product sheets and a lot more. We have also been exhibiting our products at several fairs like INTERnoise 2019 in Madrid, NoiseCON in San Diego, the International Workshop on Railway Noise 2019 in Gent and the DAGA2021 & 2022. In this project we have been updating our business plan as well, especially on gathering more information and evidence on the market dynamics.
