In the money

Nuttall is seeking to build on its impressive organic growth in the last 12 months with further inroads into the waste and energy sectors

By any reasonable measure it's been a very good year for Nuttall. Turnover is up a massive 22% on the previous year, from £469M to £572M, and the company has turned a very healthy profit. At the same time, it has been awarded both Tier 1 and Tier 2 contractor status for land remediation at the Olympic Park site.

Nuttall is one of the few pure civil engineering firms in the market, and has built its reputation on successfully delivering technically challenging civil engineering projects - not always the easiest way to make money. A glance at recent jobs, such as the construction of a new lifeboat station in Padstow and the Clyde Arc bridge in Glasgow, indicates that the company is still in this market and not afraid to be in the spotlight.

Landing a £200M remediation contract on the Olympic site puts the firm fairly and squarely in the public eye, but Nuttall has experience of this type of job from the clean up of the Greenwich Peninsula in the late 1990s.

Chief executive Martin Rogers says the project "demonstrates our ability to manage a complex land remediation and rehabilitation scheme that requires total integration with the customer, supply chain and local community in full support of the sustainability objectives established for this national project"

It is a market Nuttall has cornered very well in recent years, with a string of successful clean up contracts in South Wales under its belt as well as the Rochester Riverside scheme.

The huge increase in turnover in the past 12 months has been achieved entirely through organic growth rather than acquisition. According to Rogers, future growth is set to come from the waste and energy sectors, including nuclear activities not entirely new markets for the firm. Nuttall is currently part way through a £16M contract to create a grout curtain around a shaft containing radioactive waste at Dounreay, in preparation for removal of the waste.

Also on site at the moment is the £84M Cambridgeshire Guided Busway project to link Cambridge and St Ives, much of it in a disused rail corridor.

Like many contractors, Nuttall has worked hard at safety in recent years, and last year recorded its lowest ever number of reportable accidents (an incident frequency of 0.53).

Rogers says: "One of our primary objectives has been to drive the number of reportable accidents as close to zero as possible. The challenge is to keep the health and safety message as fresh as possible and seek improvement in work planning and a change in behaviour."

Article courtesy of New Civil Engineer (August 2007)

Further Info

For further information, contact Peter Bishop, Head of Public Relations at:
Edmund Nuttall Limited
St James House, Knoll Road, Camberley,
Surrey GU15 3XW
Tel: 01276 63484
Fax:01276 66060
E-Mail: peter.bishop@edmund-nuttall.co.uk