It’s been a bad few months for contracting businesses.
Balfour Beatty might not have been responsible for charging the Government for tagging dead prisoners as Serco did, but the exit of boss Andrew McNaughton asks big questions about the future of another firm whose internal controls have failed to keep up with the pace of its growth.
Just like Serco or G4S, Balfour shows signs of unravelling not because a newcomer has taken the helm. It’s all become too much for a long-serving company man — in this case McNaughton, who was the chief operating officer (which in most firms means the details man) going back all the way to 2009. Construction can be thankless. Never mind the giant £13 billion order book, just look at the £30 million shortfall in profits.
But Balfour should have been more careful. It was content to use the Olympic halo effect to pick up more work abroad. But just like Tesco in its expansionist phase, it failed to keep the home fires burning.
