The £100m jump in orders above last year’s haul came primarily in the technology sector where recent investment helped to secure tenders for three data centre projects.

Mark Lawrence, chief executive, said: “We are immensely proud of the teams here at TClarke that have worked hard to secure our largest ever order book which now stands at £503m.

“In March of this year, I stated that we expected revenues and profit to build rapidly throughout the course of the second half of the year as our recently secured projects gain momentum.

“With the current project programmes we believe that the second half of 2021 will be the busiest in our history.“

Revenue in the first half of the year rose 30% to £138m with the firm returning a profit of £1.9m against a loss of £1.5m the same time a year ago.

Turnover and profit in 2021 will be heavily weighted to the second half of the year.

This is particularly significant in the London business where two-thirds of secured turnover and over 80% of profit is forecast to be delivered in the last six months of the year.

London’s operating margin for the first six months was 1.4% (2020 3.2%), UK South operating margin was 3.7% (2020 3.1%) and UK North operating margin was 3.7% (2020 (1.1%)).  After deducting group costs of £1m the overall Group operating margin during the period was 1.7% (2020 2.1%).

Net cash fell to £2m from around £7.5m at the same time in 2020, mainly due to the introduction of the construction industry reverse charge VAT scheme from 1 March 2021, with the impact of this change being a once off reduction in cash of £3.5m.