Balfour Beatty to cut 400 jobs in restructuring

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As reported yesterday by nationaltradesmen.co.uk, Balfour Beatty made a loss of £150m, now we have now learnt that 400 staff will now be made redundant during the first half of this year, this figure was revealed by chief executive Leo Quinn during the company’s half-years results presentation.

Balfour Beatty are looking to make £100m of costs savings from the business by the end of next year as part of Balfour’s Build to Last turnaround strategy.

Chief executive Leo Quinn showed how Balfour Beatty  is now a quarter of the way through that program having made £25m of savings so far but cuts must continue and that the job losses been focused on back office functions like IT, HR, Legal and Finance not the construction workers.

Balfour commented: “Significant progress has been made to streamline the enabling functions within the Group, with new senior leadership in place for Finance, IT, Health and Safety, Legal, Communications and Investor Relations, Risk and Assurance and Procurement across the organisation.

“The changes reduce costs where services have previously been duplicated in more than one business unit and ensure that best practice is delivered across Balfour Beatty in a consistent way.

“A significant legacy of the rapid growth of the Group by acquisitions over the last 10 years has been multiple IT platforms.

“Therefore a key focus has been the rationalisation of IT systems and hardware across the UK business.

“The hardware implementation is now approximately 95% complete with the removal of the legacy email platforms to be completed by September.

“In the medium to long-term this rationalisation will lead to a lower cost to serve Balfour Beatty’s IT needs and greatly reduce the volume of issues experienced by the workforce, increasing their productivity.

“A new focus on procurement across the Group ensures that Balfour Beatty is positioned to negotiate the best arrangements with suppliers. Disciplined use of preferred suppliers will lead to a stronger supply chain with improved competitiveness, margin and cash flow.”