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