Scotland rules the Murdoch Awards

Coming hot on the heels of the Referendum Vote, Scotland was once more the focus of attention at the Gala Dinner which traditionally concludes the Annual Conference of the Lead Contractors Association.

The highlight of the evening was the announcement of the winners of the Murdoch Award and Murdoch Sponsors Award, the ultimate accolade for those engaged in the historic craft of working with lead, whose skills remain so much in demand today.

The fifty or so LCA members and guests had already been treated to a pre-dinner preview of all the entries for this year’s award during a drinks reception when a gallery of photographs specially prepared for the event was on display.

However the real serious stuff came at the end of the dinner when Chairman of the judging panel Dick Murdoch took his place at the rostrum to share his views on the 2014 entries with the contractors in the audience hanging on his every word.

“Mr Lead” has always had a special relationship with the Lead Contractors Association and indeed during his time as the Senior Technical Officer of the Lead Sheet Association (or Lead Development Association as it was then) was instrumental in setting up an independent lead contractors trade association in 1984.

Now thirty years later Dick paid tribute to the LCA’s ongoing and uncompromising stance on quality standards - but then proceeded to berate his audience at length because such a high standard demanded constant vigilance on site by everyone involved.

In particular Dick cautioned the site supervisors and managers who took the overall responsibility for making sure the work was right, reminding them that even the smallest incorrect detail could cause the roof to fail. This year hollow roll ends on flat and pitched roofs had come to the fore and Dick spent several minutes considering what had been seen on some sites compared to the recommendations in the Lead Sheet Manual.

Continuing the quality standards theme, Dick thanked Associated Lead Mills, who had done so much to raise the profile of the competition since agreeing to sponsor the competition in 2005 and then creating the Murdoch Sponsors Award a year later.

Finally Dick turned to the main event of the evening, the finalists and winners of the Awards. Dick commended the excellent standard of workmanship viewed on all of the three finalists of the Murdoch Sponsors Award (for projects of less than five tonnes) and it had been difficult to choose a winner from Conservation Leadwork (small flat roof area with pitched roof to three sides of a skylight), S J Baker & Sons (turret and weather vane in Hammersmith) and D Blake & Co (leadwork to a small tower roof at Dumfries House in Scotland).

However after much discussion the judges eventually decided the winner of the 2014 Murdoch Sponsors Award was D Blake and Co Ltd for their work at Dumfries House. Ewan Hay stepped forward on behalf of D Blake to receive the Murdoch Sponsors Award from Rod Bexson of Associated Lead Mills.

In considering the Murdoch Award, Dick was pleased to see new members MW Leadwork of Basingstoke as a finalist in the 2014 competition for their project in Reading, but noted they faced tough competition from John Fulton (Plumbers), twice winners of the Murdoch Award in 2006 and 2009 and Norfolk Sheet Lead, who won the Sponsors Award in 2008.

The judges decided that the winners of the 2014 Murdoch Award were John Fulton (Plumbers) of Glasgow for their outstanding work on a difficult and extremely time consuming restoration project in Govan.

Fulton Director Alasdair White stepped forward to receive the Murdoch Award from Dick and LCA Chairman Stuart Bailey. He thanked the judges for honouring John Fulton for the third time and paid tribute to his team on site who had delivered such an eye catching project which had been extremely technically demanding that he was delighted to see acknowledged by the judges in their decision.

Graham Hudson, Managing Director of sponsors Associated Lead Mills noted that this was the first time both awards had gone north of the border and looked forward to the English Welsh and Irish LCA members taking up the challenge for the 2015 competitions.