The firm’s record on equal pay was revealed as construction employers with over 250 staff published their gender pay gap figures for the second time.

The Government hopes the data will shine a light on the barriers preventing women from reaching the top.

Construction ranks as one of the worst industry’s for pay inequality with women paid a third less than men on average.

The  returns by leading main contractors reveal Laing O’Rourke is way ahead on pay equality with women on average paid 12% less than men.

Companies had to file data based on a “snapshot” of their payroll taken on 5 April 2018.

The listing of the top 40 main contractors is ranked by the median, which gives a good sense of where a company is overall, the mean figures will include the outliers with large salaries.

The mean hourly rate is the average hourly wage across the entire organisation so the mean gender pay gap is a measure of the difference between women’s mean hourly wages and men’s mean hourly wages.

The median hourly rate is calculated by ranking all employees from the highest paid to the lowest paid, and taking the hourly wage of the person in the middle; so the median gender pay gap is the difference between women’s median hourly wage (the middle paid woman) and men’s median hourly wage (the middle paid man).