As part of its drive to cut costs Balfour Beatty has announced 400 staff members will be made redundant
Chief Executive of Balfour Beatty Leo Quinn revealed yesterday that 400 members of staff will lose their jobs in an attempt to cut costs across the business.
The firm has had a turbulent 12 months and sold off numerous assets including consultancy branch Parsons Brinckerhoff and Blackpool Airport in a bid to regain control of its finances.
As part of Balfour Beatty’s Build to Last turnaround strategy Quinn is seeking to cut £100m from the business by the end of next year. The firm has already made £25m of savings so far and is around a quarter of the way through the programme.
To date redundancies have been focused in areas such as IT, HR, legal, and finance.
Balfour Beatty said: “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 per cent 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.”
