WET News

leaders 2016 9 were already a sector facing part of the business," says Jones. The business is based on framework agreements topped up where possible with one-off major projects like the Forth road crossing or South Devon Relief Road. The Leaders met with Jones Galliford Try Infrastructure's headquarters located in the idyllic rural setting of Wolvey, near Hinckley in Leicestershire, to hear his business unit "is expanding slightly at the minute" as it picks up energy from waste projects. This has been a strategy for a few years, and it is now starting to pay dividends, he says. Jones says the start to AMP6 has been very slow across the water activities. "To that end, it's been slower than the start for AMP5, which is particularly disappointing given there was a bit of effort put in to try to smooth out the boom and bust cycle. There's no one reason but many factors – water companies have restructured, totex, affordability. "As we've got the end of year one of AMP6, I've actually done significantly more work in AMP5 than I've done in AMP6 in terms of volume, which is not where I expected to be. I expected to be much more even than it has been, certainly in year one. "Year one is always a slow start and you expect that but even by normal standards it's been a little bit frustrating." Jones is anticipating that an 18-month period from September this year will be quite chaotic when there will be "a chase for spend". For AMP6, Galliford Try picked up to new contracts with Southern Water and Scottish Water but missed out with Thames Water alliance eight2O, United Utilities and Anglian Water. It is operating with Yorkshire Water through the joint venture with AECOM. "In the round, there's been ups and downs, but we're reasonably happy with where we're at," says Jones. Jones says that delivering what he has got in terms of the tendered frameworks, bolstered by one-off projects, will give him "a nice profile" over the next five years. "Then we will look at where we are at the end of the AMP and with the three areas that will be coming to market. We have a long- standing relationship with Yorkshire Water, and would like to maintain that, and we haven't worked for Severn Trent and South West. "We've come close to South West but we've never managed to crack Severn Trent." Overall, though, Jones is not looking to grow the water business significantly but maintain the size it is, which fits into the Galliford Try Infrastructure strategy of growth. Water is probably at a level where it ultimately needs to be and with the other infrastructure business units catching up. "At the moment we've got a disproportionately large slice of the infrastructure pie, and we need to balance that a little bit more. That doesn't mean we're going to shrink," says Jones, "but it does mean the others build up to it." THE NUMBERS 12/13 13/14 14/15 % cHaNgE Sales £M 386.8 355.3 359.6 1 Gross profit £M 21.2 21.0 24.7 18 Operating profit £M 3.4 1.8 2.6 41 Pre-tax profit £M 4.3 2.4 3.5 44 Staff 1,541 1,084 1,005 -7 Net assets £M 39.8 41.7 45.1 8 THE RaTIOS 12/13 13/14 14/15 % cHaNgE Return on capital % 10.8 5.9 7.8 33 Gross margin % 5.5 5.9 6.9 16 Operating margin % 0.9 0.5 0.7 40 Net margin % 1.1 0.7 1.0 42 Sales/employee £K 251.0 327.8 357.8 9 Galliford Try was a major player on United Utilities' Liverpool WwTW, which has just officially been opened The LeADeRS 2016

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