Renewed focus invigorates Barhale margins

Latest accounts from civil engineering contractor Barhale show strong margin improvement.

In the year to 30 June 2022, Barhale Group posted a pre-tax profit of £3.2m (2021: 1.3m) on turnover broadly steady at £109m (2021: £110m).

With operating profit rising from £1.3m to £3.6m, the operating margin improved from 1.2% to 3.3%.

There was also a significant net improvement in the Walsall-headquartered company’s cash position of £7.3m, driven by the completion of various major projects across the business.

Chief executive Martin Brown said: “Over the last 12 months and as part of our five-year business plan and strategy, we have worked extremely hard to improve project governance, reduce costs and right-size our organisation in line with our secured and projected workload.

“As the business plan continues to roll out, we will further increase our focus on investment in our people, cost management, engineering assurance and programme management. This, in turn, will continue to make our business more resilient to the current economic conditions and gives a greater offering to our existing and new client base. These results create the ideal platform from which to build this growth in line with our business strategy.”

He continued: “Project delivery highlights in 2021/22 saw the successful completion of major projects with both Thames Tideway and North London Waste Authority. These were highly complex projects that were delivered on time and on budget.

“Going forward our primary focus will be to maintain and build our long-term relationships with our client base which has, to date, translated into a very strong current order book of £775m. “Operating in line with our five year business plan, our decision to deepen our resource and capability in rail has resulted in a significant growth in our civils work and we continue to actively pursue contracts in the sector. Expanding our order book in rail will further support sustainable growth and will build on the successful experience gained and the relationships fostered on the Network Rail Finsbury Park AFA scheme, Euston Station, Barking Riverside, HS2 enabling works and The Greenway.”