Balfour Beatty to close 35 offices
BALFOUR Beatty is planning to close 35 of its 70 offices and shed 650 jobs as part of a cost cutting drive.
In its half-year results the group said the move represented the second phase of an efficiency drive designed to save £50m by 2015.
The group has the Northern headquarters of Balfour Beatty Construction in Manchester but would not say where the axe will fall.
The UK construction arm employs 12,000 and includes Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering, Balfour Beatty Construction, Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Services and Mansell.
“We have already made good progress in Phase two this year,” said the company in a stock market statement.
“The UK construction business is being rationalised with a new operating model based on just three business streams which will be up and running in January 2013.
“This will allow us to reduce the number of employees in back office functions by approximately 650 and rationalise our property portfolio from 75 locations to around 40 locations.”
In the six months to the end of June underlying pre-tax profits from continuing operations rose 12% to £154m on sales of £5.5bn, up 6%.
