Analysis of the UK’s top 100 construction companies over the past decade shows turnover tops £70bn but profit margins remain weak. Data provides an opportunity to change this, say Mark Coates and Matt Cox of Bentley Systems
The turnover of the UK’s 100 largest construction companies increased by more than 14% over a decade to reach more than £70bn a year according to exclusive analysis by Bentley Systems.
Over the same time period, the collective annual profit of the UK’s largest construction firms has risen by more than 66%, from £790.8m in 2013 to £1.31bn in 2022.
Average profit margin of the top 100 contractors over the past 10 years was just 1.6%.
Average profit margins have increased significantly over the past decade
In the first five years of the past decade from 2013 to 2017, average profit margin of the top 100 was just 1.18%.
However, over the past five years from 2018 to 2022, average profit margin has almost doubled to 2.02% – an increase in margin of more than 70%.
Homeserve recorded the largest profit in 2022 with £175m, followed Morgan Sindall with £162m, Balfour Beatty on £87m, Skanska on £73m and Keller Group on £72m.
Homeserve, Watkin Jones, FP McCann, HG Construction, Henry Boot, HW Martin, and RJ Mcleod were the only seven contractors to record double-digit profit margins in 2022.
The number of £1bn turnover construction companies has risen by 29% over the past decade from 17 in 2013 to 22 in 2022.
2022 was the first time that the UK has had 20 or more £1bn contractors
Among the contractors joining or rejoining the £1bn club in 2022 are Sir Robert McAlpine, BAM Nuttall, Costain and Vinci.
Only 14 firms of the Top 100 construction companies registered a loss in the 2022 analysis of accounts compared with 25 in 2021.
The exclusive analysis has been carried out by Be the Best Communications’ People, Places, Policy & Data Unit on behalf of Bentley Systems.
The analysis used the Construction Index’s annual analysis of the UK’s Top 100 Construction Companies between 2013 and 2022 based on accounts filed at Companies House.
The fastest-growing construction companies of the past 10 years include:
- Graham Construction, which saw turnover increase by 258% over the past decade from £264.2m in 2013 to £948.3m in 2022.
- Multiplex, which enjoyed a 256% increase in turnover from £222.3m to £793m.
- Renew Holdings, which reported a 134% increase in turnover from £337.4m to £791m.
- McLaughlin & Harvey, which has experienced a 219% rise in turnover from £150.6m to £480.3m.
Indeed, McLaughlin & Harvey are now part of one of the fastest-growing bands of contractors in the UK – the midsize contractor recording turnover between £400m to £600m.
In 2013, there were just six companies reporting turnover between these bandings.
By 2022 that figure had increased by 150% to 15 companies and now includes Ferrovial, Watkin Jones Plc, Severfield Plc, Henry Construction, Bouygues UK, and Lendlease.
It also includes fast-growing contractors like TSL, which saw turnover increase by 57% from £348.2m in 2021 to £548m in 2022, and Hill Partnerships, which saw a turnover rise by a quarter from £346.5m to £431.5m.
While profit margins of the UK’s top 100 construction companies have almost doubled over the past decade, analysis has found that the UK and other major English-speaking countries have the world’s worst profit margins, according to analysis by international consultant Turner & Townsend.
Turner & Townsend’s International Construction Market Survey 2021 asked a sample of firms in 90 worldwide markets to provide typical profit margins on a medium-sized commercial job.
It found the UK had the lowest margins at 3.9%, followed by Australia and New Zealand at 4.5% and North America at 4.6%.
In contrast, profit margins in continental Europe stood at 6.1%.
How data can improve margins
Bentley Systems believes that construction companies will be able to increase their profit margin in future years by leveraging the level of insight that data gives them into construction projects so that they can advise how to improve the performance of that asset over future years.
Last year my colleague, Mark Coates, international director of public policy and advocacy at Bentley Systems, published a white paper that looked at The Power of Data for Long-Lasting Change.
As Mark Enzer, digital director at the Centre for Digital Built Britain, states in his white paper on creating a system of systems: “Making better use of asset and systems data is central to this vision: better analysis of better data enables better decisions, producing better outcomes. It promises to improve the way [that] organisations function, the delivery of new assets and the operation, maintenance and use of existing assets. ‘Digital assets’, such as data, information, algorithms and digital twins, should be recognised as genuine assets that have value, which therefore must be managed effectively and securely. In time, as these digital assets become valued, connected data will be seen as infrastructure.”
Having a longer-term relationship is in the best interests of all parties: the contractor and consultant and the client. It means additional income streams for the contractor and consultant over longer time periods.
A number of delivery partners are now looking at extending these relationships in what we have coined “x +10 or 20,” where x equals the length of a project and 10 or 20 equates to the number of additional years that they could be employed to manage the asset. For the client, this means that they can hold the delivery team to account and deal with the people who know the asset best.
While it is heartening to see the profit margin of the top 100 construction companies doubling from a very low base, Bentley believes in future years that profit margin will increase further as firms learn to further leverage the power of data (see fig 1).
Mark Coates
International director of public policy and advocacy
Matt Cox
Account manager, Northern Europe
Bentley Systems
Tel: +353 1 436 4600
www.bentley.com
