The latest report and accounts from Barhale shows the business continues to build on the progress of the previous two years, increasing turnover and maintaining profits in line with its strategic plans.

In the year to 30 June 2024, the civil engineering, infrastructure and tunnelling group posted a turnover of £177m, a 32% uplift on the previous year’s figure of £133m, as the business continued to perform successfully across all areas.

Profit before tax rose to £8.4m, a return of 4.76% and there was also an improvement in the company’s net cash position of £24m, driven by the completion of various major projects across the business.

Chief Executive Martin Brown believes the close alignment with customers’ targets and objectives has been the key driver in Barhale’s sustained growth and profitability which are again in line with forecast.

“We are now three years into our five-year plan and we have been very disciplined in following it closely throughout,” he said. “During the last financial year, we focussed heavily on cost control, progressive assurance and proactively managing risk. This focus has allowed the business to maintain controlled growth and profitability while we continue to deliver against our clients’ expectations.

“Everyone within our business has worked hard and with complete commitment to our direct delivery model to ensure that we delivered our forecast business plan over the last 12 months. The results this year are again a testament to their efforts.”

Martin Brown highlighted the ongoing strategy of reinvestment of profits back into the business.

“To continue to improve our client offering and our direct delivery model we are looking at ways to increase the breadth and depth of our resource. To that end and to support our recent contract awards, we have recently acquired specialist design organisation ESL.

“The ESL team has established a reputation for buildable solutions which combine value engineering principles with design and construction innovation and their provision will sit alongside our existing design relationships, able to support all of our construction works with both civils and MEICA design capabilities.

“ESL will extend our in-house construction services, enabling us to apply the value engineering principles we have benefitted from over the last six months at the very earliest stage of project engagement. As a result, I am confident that we can further challenge present day design and construction methodologies to drive opportunities and maximise efficiencies for our clients.

“We look forward to working as one team going forward with a primary focus of continuing to grow the ESL business within the water sector through our newly awarded long term AMP8 framework contracts,” he said. “We will also be maintaining ESL’s existing design capabilities and design works within the rail electrification and civil engineering sector. 

“There has also been significant investment around the people/plant interface where we continue to integrate artificially intelligent human form recognition systems into machinery to reduce risk to workers,” he said. “It’s a good example of how we continue to adopt new thinking so that we deliver a safer workplace and a better result for clients.

“Looking forward, we remain committed to our five-year business plan. Years four and five will see an increased focus on driving innovation, programme management and engineering assurance to enable the next stage of sustainable growth.

“We continue to maintain and build our long-term relationships with our client base which has resulted in us successfully securing multiple long-term Tier One framework contracts UK-wide for the new AMP8 programme. These recent contract awards have translated into a very strong current order book of circa £1.061bn with further long-term framework awards anticipated.”