Balfour Beatty cuts costs for lower workloads

Aaron Morby 12 years ago
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Balfour Beatty is pressing on with its cost-cutting programme in the face of falling workloads in the UK.

Balfour has handed over several big projects in recent months including the Aquatics Centre for the London 2012 Olympics, A3 Hindhead dual carriageway, hospitals in Salford, Tameside and Fife.

Britain’s biggest contractor said the UK forward order book had fallen, although new orders from the US have kept it at £15.5bn for the group as a whole.

In a trading statement, the firm said: “While the Government’s austerity measures impact the UK construction market, we expect the power and commercial markets to pick up in the medium term to offset the shortage in public projects.

“In the meantime, we are pressing ahead with our previously announced cost reduction programme in addition to the cost base adjustments that are a normal course of our business.

Balfour has focused on its back office restructuring for much of 2011, but is also now looking for further costs savings around the business.

On the professional services side, Balfour is repositioning staff where possible to higher growth areas such as the Middle East and Australia.

Support services continued to buck the downward trend.

Balfour working through the mobilisation stages for a number of new contract wins in local authorities.

These include Warwickshire and Coventry highways term maintenance, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire County Councils street lighting, North West Fire and Rescue Services, Hertfordshire Schools, Camden and Islington facilities management and West Sussex highways.

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