The head of Galliford Try's construction arm reiterated his support for the Scottish Government's infrastructure investment policies which he said are helping keep the market in Scotland in better shape than south of the Border.
Ken Gillespie said strong activity in public-sector markets helped the company's Morrison Construction business make progress amid challenging economic conditions during the year to June when it increased turnover and employee numbers in Scotland.
"The Scottish Government have very early realised the economic benefits from infrastructure investment and been very active in identifying a pipeline of projects and transforming that into real work on the ground," said Mr Gillespie.
"The Coalition approach was to cut, cut and cut. Some of that has come back. They are now talking about the need to get shovel-ready projects on the ground. Scotland has been doing that effectively for two years."
Mr Gillespie said he expects the Scottish business to remain busy on the basis of work in the pipeline or expected to come to market, assuming it submits enough successful bids.
However, Galliford Try is focusing housebuilding resources on the market in the south of England, where demand is strong. In Scotland activity is limited to a small number of sites.
Mr Gillespie said turnover at the construction arm in Scotland was up slightly last year on the £200 million annual average recorded over the past five years. Staff numbers increased by 20% annually to around 1000.
The group increased pre-tax profits by 80% in the year to June, to £63.1m, from £35.1m in the preceding year, helped by strong growth in housebuilding profits.
Galliford Try is part of the consortium building the Forth Replacement Crossing, and it is also working on the £300m 10-year framework for the Scottish South East hub project to deliver community facilities and is an investor in the hub's Public Private Partnership.
It belongs to the consortium that has been appointed preferred bidder for the £500m South West hub.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article