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.