Building company confident on £40m turnover

Deputy Business Editor

Saturday 1 September 2012

BUILDING firm McTaggart Construction is confident of continuing to buck the trend in its troubled sector by keeping turnover above £40 million and maintaining seven-figure profits.

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GREIG CAMERON

At a time of corporate failures and redundancies, the Ayrshire company is in the enviable position of having an 18-month visibility in its order books.

Earlier this year it won its largest one-off contract, after forming the Urban Union consortium with Robertson Group Holdings and Keepmoat.

The venture was successful in securing the £22m first phase of work for 201 affordable houses on the Laurieston Transformational Regeneration Area in central Glasgow.Gary Climson, commercial director, said: "There are at least 100 people working on that site with a mix of full-time staff and sub-contractors."It is a two-year project so is due to finish in May 2014. Hopefully there will be a follow-on as well, as Phase 1b, the first part of the private housing, is due to start in March 2014, which would be good time for us coming off site at the first phase."We would hope to be a contender to win that contract, having done the first part."McTaggart, founded in 1946, has a long track record in social housing and its 250-strong workforce is active on several other sites in the west of Scotland at the moment.These include new flats, at Giffnock, for Hanover Housing Association; a £10m project with Partick Housing Association; and social housing units in Johnstone, for LINK Group.Mr Climson said: "We have always done affordable housing – it has been more than 75% of our business for the past 15 years or so."We have long-standing framework agreements with 12 housing associations at the moment and we tend to get repeat business from that, although we also win work through competitive tenders."I think we have been able to maintain turnover and profits as we are still very much a traditional, old-fashioned building contractor which employs a lot of people. "We have a lot of in-house trades with civil engineering, plumbing, electrical, timber frame, scaffolding, bricklayers and joiners. "So we don't have to rely on subcontractors, which hopefully makes us more efficient and gives better quality. "We think that is one of the reasons we get so much repeat business."Mr Climson is confident McTaggart can continue to maintain its position in the market.He added: "It is still very challenging out there and margins have been cut but we have to cut our cloth accordingly. "We tend to be on site with 10 to 12 developments at any one time, which has kept our turnover steady at about £40m for the last few years. "Our forward order book is such that it will remain at that for at least the next few years."We have enough work for the next 12 to 18 months, so we are in quite a fortunate place at the moment."

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Building company confident on £40m turnover

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