THE head of Balfour Beatty's construction business in Scotland expects the division to increase turnover by 8% this year when its success in winning public sector work will compensate for the dearth of private contracts.
Tim Clarke, divisional managing director, said Balfour Beatty Construction is in line to record revenues of £140 million in Scotland in 2012, up from £130m the preceding year.
The projected increase will be partly driven by revenues Balfour Beatty will earn under a string of contracts won from public bodies in recent months.
These include a £13m project to refurbish the Glasgow Royal Infirmary university tower.
Balfour Beatty won another £13m contract to refurbish two buildings in the Strathclyde University complex in the city.
It is also working on a £4.6m contract to build a power networks demonstration centre in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, which is being developed by the university with Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern Energy and Scottish Enterprise.
The sums involved in all three contracts may seem small in the context of a business that had global revenues of £11bn in 2011.
However, Mr Clarke said big construction firms have been competing hard for contracts that might have been left to smaller players when there was more big ticket work to be had.
Mr Clarke said public sector work in Scotland played a key part in helping Balfour Beatty withstand the downturn in the private market since 2007. The construction business had annual turnover of £165m three years ago.
Mr Clarke highlighted the role of the Government's Scottish Futures Trust in bringing public contracts to the market.
"South of the Border things have come to a stop," said Mr Clarke.
However, he warned that conditions would be challenging over the next two years pending the start of work on a number of big contracts in the pipeline.
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