The UK’s largest construction firm is toasting a big jump in annual profits despite a £44million blow from the Aberdeen city bypass project.
Balfour Beatty, whose recent and ongoing projects also include the new Elgin High School and Dorenell Windfarm in Moray, as well as the design and construction of the Bhlaraidh and Beinneun windfarm connections project near Fort Augustus, said yesterday its underlying operating profits more than doubled to £196million last year.
The firm is one of the remaining two partners building the long-awaited Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR), following the collapse of Carillion.
Rising AWPR costs within a £745million Transport Scotland contract were a factor in a string of profit warnings from Carillion before it crashed earlier this year despite winning a raft of key UK Government contracts.
The other surviving partner in the Aberdeen Roads consortium building the AWPR, Morrison Construction – which is part of Galliford Try – expects to fork out up to £40million extra for the new road, which is now slated for completion in the summer. Balfour Beatty said Aberdeen Roads continued to move ahead with the “complex” 36-mile route, adding that it had booked a one-off non-underlying loss provision of £44million, which reflected the group’s additional loss on the contract.
The company has also assumed Carillion’s share of the UK’s biggest ongoing road project, the £1.5billion upgrade of the A14 in Cambridgshire.
Pre-tax profits for 2017 came in at £117million, up from £17million the year before, on group revenue that was flat at £6.9billion.