Latest Expert Witness News

Building up the case for brickwork

The off-site lobby has had a field day lately, portraying brick as expensive and brickwork as a dying art. It's wrong on both counts as a report by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors has demolished the misleading claims about its cost. And it says that brickwork beats just about any other cladding material on price.

Also, there are no shortages of trained bricklayers in this country. According to ConstructionSkills, there were nearly 120,000 of them at the last count. And the transformation of London's St Pancras railway station into an international rail terminal shows that precision and skill in bricklaying are alive and kicking.

Favourite choice

Brick has long been a favourite among architects, contractors and the public. Its warm and humanising character brings buildings to life. An external brick wall adds scale, colour and texture. Then there's the choice. About 1,200 different varieties of brick are produced in the UK alone, from handmade bricks made by traditional techniques to mass-produced extruded and stock bricks.

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