Building Nettles

  Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: Rolled Lead Sheet, The Complete Manual. The Lead Sheet Association The Lead Sheet Association produces this manual about the design and installation of rolled lead to various building elements, covering everything from roofs and chimneys, to cornices, gutters, and lead sheet cladding. Lead workers, Architects, Building Surveyors, inspectors, and contractors alike may find this useful. The draftsmanship to the 3D, coloured, technical drawings within the manual are excellent. It also references BS EN 12588:2006, the malleability , fatigue , and creep resistance, for the various thicknesses (code no.) required for the lead when used in different locations, and considering the anticipated life of the building. This is a 2015 edition, but I am sure there have been updates. This is their website:   https://leadsheet.co.uk/service/rolled-lead-sheet-the-complete-manual/    

  Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: Period Houses, A Conservation Guidance Manual Compiled By Frank Keohane If you love the historic buildings around Dublin, and Ireland in general, you may enjoy this book just as much. Published by The Dublin Civic Trust, this book gets into the architecture, the principles, and philosophies of conservation, and then focuses on the defects that can occur in historic properties, and the methods and practices for remediation in accordance with the principles of conservation. It covers all manner of defects from neoclassical door fan lights, to canted bay windows, efflorescence, to rococo embellished joinery. Professional Surveyors to interested amateurs, and period building owners might enjoy and benefit from this book.

  Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: Profit from Procurement, Add 30% to your Bottom Line by Breaking Down Silos By Alex Klein, Simon Whatson, Jose Oliveira The authors of this book are procurement people, and it shows. With decades of procurement experience distilled into this book, they know the issues faced by procurement departments and they are on point. Some excellent guidance, examples, and direction identified which can be applied immediately. The book covers everything from the people, the operations, the strategies for internal and external practices, and planning. Some highlights: -         Getting the function out of the way, minimising friction. -         Using supplier market studies to ask intelligent questions about how buyers and suppliers do business, and not just to tick a box. -         Supplier engagement, hav...

  Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: Surveying Buildings By Malcolm Hollis Colloquially known as the “Building Surveyors Bible”, this book is essential reading for Building Surveyors, dealing with administration and duties of the Surveyor, to surveying procedures and checklists, reporting, and equipment. It delves into building elements, discussing various defects and their identification and treatment. It is UK oriented with the inclusion of some uncommon construction methods and materials to Ireland. It is also a 2005 edition; since then, numerous common defects have presented themselves in Ireland, that are not covered in this book. But it is still an excellent reference document for students, and professional alike.

  Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: How Big Things Get Done, The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project , from Home Renovations to Space Exploration By Bent Flyvberg and Dan Gardner A book that leaves its mark. Following analysis of data collected from 1910 onwards and containing 16,000 projects from 136 countries, the authors describe their finding as to why projects fail to meet their time, cost, and benefits targets . Only 8.5% of projects meet their budget and are on time and “…the actual mean cost overrun of a major building project is 62%”. It covers topics from: -         Human biases and fallacies ; sunk costs, uniqueness bias, etc. -         “ Strategic misrepresentation” - “if we gave the true expected outcome costs nothing would be built” -         It tackles the costing of unknown unknowns, have you e...

  Curious Books, series: Chimney Pots and Stacks, An Introduction to their History Variety and Identification By Valentine Fletcher The Building Surveyors might enjoy this one. Valentine Fletcher went through the history of chimney pots and identified almost 500 historic shapes, sizes, and styles. “The principles underlying the design of these chimney-pots may be stated as follows: 1.      To increase the velocity of ascent of the smoke by reducing the cross-sectional area of the outlet. 2.      To minimize the effect of down-draught by reducing the area acted on by wind. 3.      To promote up-draught by creating a cross-draught inside the upper part of the chimney.” Learn about the Beaded Cannon Head, the Irish Roll, the Four Pocket Beehive, and the Horned Louvre, among many others. This book, you may be excited to hear, is where the word “caminology” was coined, the study of chimn...

  Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: Project Risk and Opportunity Management, The Owner’s Perspective By Agnar Johansen, et al. In search of industry experience regarding opportunities available to the Employer in the delivery of major works projects, I discovered this book by Agnar Johansen et al. This book provides a world of advice for well-defined and well-lead construction projects. It covers projects that consist of small teams, to mega projects. It includes a lot of the basics, but also practical actions and analysis related to leadership , risk and opportunity identification, turbulence , etc. I would highly recommend this book to project managers in any industry. If you have any other good project management book recommendations, I would love to read them below.    

  Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: The Purchasing Chessboard, 64 Methods to Reduce Costs and Increase Value with Suppliers By Christian Schuh, et al. This book has provided some excellent direction in the realm of procurement , specifically in the construction industry. By using the methods and information provided, it was straight forward to utilise the condensed experience and insight of over 1,000 procurement projects, carried out worldwide, in the 6 years prior to publication of this book. I used the scoring matrix and analysis tool to score projects, and reference against the various strategies identified and explained within, to create the purchasing chessboard fingerprint. It was then possible to use the guidance to select the most appropriate strategies for application within short- and longer-term procurement plans, along with various other considerations beyond the realm of this book. If you have any other good procurement book recommendations, I ...

    Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: War Games, The Psychology of Combat By Leo Murray I found this book provided some excellent food for thought, such as: 1.      Identifying the correct KPI’s for your goals. 2.      Using psychological methods as part of the weapons arsenal to achieve those goals. 3.      Team cohesion and motivation through ideology, weapons pull, etc. 4.      Keeping Plans Simple, and good execution; ease of implementation, flexibility, clarity. 5.      Defeating the competition – unpredictable use of flanking, proximity, advertising, and weapons push. Creating confusion, withdrawal/surrender, among the enemy. 6.      Giving the enemy the opportunity to surrender, and sign posting it. Not leaving them on “death ground”. Any thoughts, comments welcome below?   ...

  Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: The Starfish and the Spider , The Unstoppable Power of # Leaderless Organisations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom This is an interesting look at the overall strategies that could be adopted for an organisation or even political movement. It is worth considering if these strategies can be applied to an organisation or group, or even to a project management team within a large organisation. There are many different examples used, from the Apache structure to MGM and the peer-to-peer music website Grokster. They identify ten rules in summary: 1.      Diseconomies of scale – adaptability, less overheads, etc. 2.      The # network effect – Less costs, greater value with each new member, richer information. 3.      The power of # chaos – Creativity , innovation , etc. 4.      Knowledge at the edge – The best knowledge...

  Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: The # Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Handbook, Tools and Methods for # Process Acceleration by Frank Voehl, H. James Harrington, Chuck Mignosa, Rich Charron The bedrock of efficient process control and production methods, this book has been an excellent resource and reference tool for me in the design and implementation of processes across a variety of areas. Everything from waste control to lean concepts, tools, and methods, case studies and examples. There are methods for efficient quality production ( # Taguchi Method), to change processes ( # Kaizen , # Kaikaku , and # Kakushin ). Root Cause Analysis, to statistical and other non-statistical tools, among much more methods, analysis, and project strategy tools are included. This will be a well-worn book by the end of my career. # leansixsigma # sixsigma # Rootcause  

Books you shouldn’t read to fail, series: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, A # Leadership fable by Patrick Lencioni I can’t recommend this book enough for anyone who wants to manage successful, productive, and game changing TEAMS. Identifying politicking, creating trust, removing the fear of productive conflict, and getting results, among other insights. It’s very straight forward, and even provides a useful survey tool for your team to take and self-assess their susceptibility to the dysfunctions. When managing, this book is always at the forefront of my mind.