Update from the LSA Technical Department

Since my last contribution to this blog back in June, the Technical Department of the Lead Sheet Association saw a sharp rise in the number of technical enquiries it received, especially in July, which has really kept us on our toes both in and out of the office. In part I would imagine this is down to a last minute rush to ensure that projects were in receipt of any outstanding details or queries before individuals began their summer breaks and also an indication that the industry as a whole is on the up and contractors and architects alike are busy. The recent spell of warm weather is allowing works to progress apace and all of those tricky little details that some are unsure about are coming to the fore and need addressing on occasion.

Interestingly, we have even received emails from some roofers in Russia eager to find out how they can use rolled lead sheet out there. As you can imagine this involves some tremendous variations in temperature (-40C to + 90C) which presents some interesting problems as far as thermal expansion and contraction is concerned. In any case, we hope to welcome a few of them here to the training school sometime in November to give them an introduction to the world of lead. 

Back on home soil David Pounds and I have also been called out to look at a few sites around the country where concerns over quality and standards have been raised. I cannot stress enough how important it is to ensure that whoever is carrying out leadwork out there is fully up to speed with all of our technical detailing and advice. The Rolled Lead Sheet Manual is there for all to use as is the website and David and I are always at the end of the phone to help if we can, but at the end of the day all of our advice is only of use in the right hands. Lead is the most wonderful and versatile material and we would all like to see it fitted to ensure maximum longevity. So whatever the problems, no matter how big or small, please talk to us here in the technical department and we will do whatever we can to help.

Darren Tutt

Technical Officer

LSA seminar for CIAT Channel Islands Region

I was asked to deliver the LSA RIBA approved CPD to the Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists, Channel Islands Region  recently, and was the first to have been delivered on the islands.

An invitation was extended by Grant Steer Technical Director at Tyrrell Dowinton Associates and CIAT Regional Chairman, the event was organised by Silvie Evans Architectural Technologist with Tyrrell Dowinton Associates and took place in the Harry Bound room at Les Cotils, St Peterport, Guernsey.

The event was attended by 41 professionals from companies and organisations such as Tyrrell Dowinton Associates, C A Duquemin Ltd, Leadwork Unlimited, States of Guernsey, Northgates Guernsey Ltd, Sarnian Roofing Ltd, P F+A Ltd, Chris Workman & Co Ltd, Rock Property & Construction Services, Cresswell Cuttle and Dyke Limited, Kingdom Architects, Dunnell Robertson Partnership, Guernsey Housing Association, Lovell & Partners Limited, A7 Design and a number of individuals. 

The general feedback was very positive with such comments as ‘Well worthwhile – I don’t usually state that the lead I use has to be to BSEN 12588 but I will now going forward’, ‘A thoroughly enjoyable CPD, I learnt a lot about the three different manufactures of lead, Steve will be asked to return next year’.

 

All were invited to take advantage of the new manual deal which incorporates a link to the new e-Book version which most found very useful; details can be found are on our website at www.leadsheet.co.uk


Steve Reynolds
Regional Marketing Manager

BIM – Where does lead sheet fit in?

The Government has stated that, by the end of 2016, all public sector construction projects must use BIM (Building Information Modelling). Other clients are now insisting on BIM detailing from suppliers and it is likely that this approach will be near universal within construction with a few years. The argument that designing buildings digitally should finally mean that the construction industry finally adopts the lean approach that other sectors have long implemented is robust. The challenges within the strategy Construction 2025 (lower lifetime costs, faster delivery, less carbon and more exports) will need this approach if they have a hope of success.

The LSA clearly needs to work out exactly how rolled lead sheet will fit into the new approach and the information we need to be providing to industry professionals. Our on-line CAD drawings are immensely popular – last month we had around 5,000 downloaded and in a recent survey of LSA services, 92% of users rated them as very good or adequate – but our BIM offerings remain rather thin. We could include the metrics of rolled lead sheet but it’s rarely used in its basic form. Features fabricated from lead sheet form part of many buildings. As Edinburgh Architect Richard Murphy put it at our recent event with RIBA Journal ‘lead gets you out of tricky corners’. 

Some thoughts on what users would find useful would be helpful.


Richard Diment,
 LSA Executive Manager

Report from LSA Prize awards at Nottingham Trent University Graduation ceremony

A new initiative for the Lead Sheet Association is sponsoring prizes for two students graduating in surveying at Nottingham Trent University. I was delighted to be at the University's School of Architecture on Thursday to meet students and staff and present the prizes.

Hannah Sedgwick received her prize for an excellent Conservation Research Project and Katie Hillier for her outstanding work in Building Surveying Practice. Chatting to Hannah after the presentation ceremony, I was fascinated to learn that her course had included a placement year in the works department of one of our most iconic buildings - Buckingham Palace.

It's probably sexist to mention that the university chose to make the first of the new prizes to women. I think it's a sign of the attraction of careers in construction which, despite the efforts of many, remain dominated by men.

Congratulations to Hannah and Katie. I look forward to hearing how their careers progress. From what I've learnt, they both deserve to go far.


Richard Diment,
LSA Executive Manager

Housing – how can the targets be met?

No apologies for returning to an old hobby horse of mine – Housing. A colleague recently passed me a report published by leading accountants BDO that had found that 95% of house builders didn’t believe that the Government would achieve its aim of building 240,000 new homes each year by 2016. My immediate response was that I was surprised that as many as 5% thought they would.

Building new homes clearly matters to the thousands of people who want their own home (and the thousands more who will join that group as the population increases and demographics change over the next decade or so), but with 70% of rolled lead sheet being used in new homes it matters to our industry as well.

I’m just not convinced that, despite the rhetoric, politicians of any of the major parties, at national or local level, are really determined to tackle this problem. The headlines in last week’s cabinet reshuffle focussed on the top jobs but lost in the weeds of the announcements was that we have yet another new Minister for Housing. The new Minister, Brandon Lewis MP, is the fourth holder of this office since the coalition came to office in 2010 and succeeds a Minister who held the post for just nine months!

The previous administration was no better. We had four Ministers for Housing (and usually several other things as well) during three years of Gordon Brown’s premiership.

Although Brandon Lewis’s appointment has moved Housing slightly up the ministerial pecking order as he’s a Minister of State whereas his predecessor was in the more junior position of Parliamentary Under-Secretary, when I look back into history real success in achieving housing targets came when the role had cabinet rank back in the 1950s and 1960s. Harold MacMillan secured his rise to the top of the greasy pole of politics as the Cabinet Minister who got 300,000 new homes built in a year.

I’m far from certain that we’ll ever build the number of new homes we need unless Housing once again has its own seat at the top table.

Richard Diment

LSA Executive Manager

LSA seminars prove great success across the British Isles

I recently had the pleasure of leaving our mainland to visit the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland to deliver our Design and Specification of Lead CPD presentation.

The Isle of Man was bustling with activity as it was practice week for the TT races (which was a pleasure for me as I am also a Biker). I held the CPD at the Palace Hotel and Casino on the Promenade in Douglas, a great location; the audience was to the Isle of Man region of the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB). We had a great presentation with plenty of questions and interest in what I had to say, and all made me very welcome, the surprising aspect of my research before the presentation with Steve Dempsey of CIOB was that the Lead theft issue was not an issue as the Isle of Man do not and have not suffered the pain of metal theft on the Island, a refreshing change.

I then travelled to Northern Ireland to present a couple of CPD Presentations to Belfast area Architects, the first being Alan Patterson Design in Helen’s bay County Down. The practice made me very welcome with great interest shown in Lead Sheet and its applications. I had the chance after the presentation to chat with the practice principle Alan Patterson, who told me that things had been bad during the recession for his business, but however things were now very much on the up and he had recruited more staff in recent times to deal with the extra workload so things very upturned.

I then made a presentation to Kennedy Fitzgerald Architects in Belfast; once again I was made very  welcome in my first time to Northern Ireland, very positive response to my presentation, again a positive outlook for the future with a busy workload for the practice.

Thank you to both the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland for your hospitality, and as you say in Ireland “Sláinte”

Simon Tate,  Regional Marketing Manager.

Metal theft – the problem is perception

Concern about metal theft remains a barrier to specifying lead sheet on some building products. This concern is now mainly based on perception rather than reality as the volume of metal theft has fallen significantly over the last year or two.

On Monday I attended a meeting of the Metal Theft Working Group run by the Association of Chief Police Officers. Although the final figures for metal stolen during 2013-14 will not be available until the Home Office publishes its crime statistics later in the year, all regions of England and Wales reported further reductions (building on those achieved in 2012-13) in recent months. Typically theft levels are down to around 25-30% of the levels they were at and even this figure is made up by recent growth in the theft of catalytic converters from motor vehicles. Interestingly in the two hour discussion there was hardly any mention of theft of metal sheet, including lead, from buildings.

The full implementation of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act towards the end of 2013 has clearly had a major impact. More than 6,000 dealers are now registered under the Act. The police and local authorities are building up an intelligence-led picture to allow them to target those most likely to be involved in dodgy dealings and take action against unregistered sites. Around 60 sites have already been closed or under an investigation that may result in them being shut down. Although some of the fines imposed on dealers have been modest in other cases penalties of as much as £6000 have been imposed.

Mobile collectors remain an area of concern with one police region reporting that it had stopped over 1,500 vans over the last three months and found around one-third either carrying stolen material or infringing vehicle regulations. Considerable effort is also being put into Operation Baltic, a joint initiative to check that stolen metal is not being exported in containers. Early indications are that this is a less likely route out of UK for stolen metal than had been expected.

The message seems to be clear. Sensible precautions still need to be taken to protect lead sheet from theft but its vulnerability has reduced very substantially in the last few years. Those wanting to specify lead sheet should now be able to tell clients, and insurers, that the risks of it being stolen are now very low.


Richard Diment,
LSA Exective Manager

News from the LSA Technical Department

Having been given the opportunity to blog on behalf of the technical department of the Lead Sheet Association, it is only right to extend my thanks to all those that attended our one day technical and hands on seminar here at our office and training facility in East Peckham, Kent. We usually hold this event at least once a year, providing a more in-depth experience for those interested. The morning session involved a technical briefing, touching on as many subjects as possible and trying to answer attendees’ more immediate questions. I always find someone has a project either in the pipeline or underway with an issue that needs solving or overcoming which may not always be immediately obvious in our rolled lead sheet manual!

The afternoon moved onto our workshop/training area whereupon we gave people the chance to become ‘hands on.’ Many architects/surveyors never get the opportunity to have a go themselves and always go away with a new-found respect for the many gifted leadworkers out there.

It was nice to see that those that came were not solely from this sector but were from various parts of the industry – estimators, roofers and even chimney sweeps. So once more, thank you to all those that came and if anyone else out there is interested in future events such as this please get in touch and register your interest. Subject to sufficient demand, we may run another seminar later in the year and it would be great to welcome you and give you a really good value for money and hopefully enlightening day.

Darren Tutt

Technical Officer

Lead sheet is a contemporary construction product

Given that most people usually only see lead roofing on historic buildings getting across the message that lead sheet is a product to use in modern construction isn’t always that easy. So the opportunity to co-host a seminar with the respected RIBA journal on the use of BSEN12588 Rolled Lead Sheet wasn’t one to pass by.

The event was held on Monday at The Building Centre in London, and around 60 construction professionals, mainly architects, turned up for a fascinating morning showcasing lead sheet on a range of modern commercial and domestic buildings.

The case studies highlighted, all of which will be written up shortly for an article in RIBA Journal and be featured on the LSA web-site, showed the imaginative use of lead sheet on the roof, as vertical cladding and even as soffits. As one of the speakers put it succinctly ‘Lead gets you out of tricky corners’. The same speaker admitted that in one project he had rejected lead as he felt that copper cladding would provide a better contrast with the brickwork but had learnt how much easier it was to work with lead than copper in the process.

It was also gratifying to hear the frequent references from speakers to the support and advice they had received from the LSA’s technical department.

The lively Q&A session covered subjects’ technical and aesthetic as well as the lack of knowledge about the measures taken in recent years that have drastically reduced the amount of metal theft. There was also an interesting discussion about identifying craftsmen who really can deliver on leadwork as opposed to those who simply say they can.

I had the task of summing up at the end of the morning. I was able to pull from the presentations all the merits of rolled lead sheet – its versatility, cost effectiveness, green credentials but above all how good it looks.

Richard Diment

Executive Manager