“Cash is king,” goes the phrase and never more so than at Morgan Sindall, the contractor which this year has recorded the unprecedented feat – for a listed builder, anyway – of upgrading its predicted annual profit four times. This is an industry, remember, where, the opposite usually happens.

“We’re going to have a record year by a country mile,” concedes its chief executive, John Morgan, the man who helped to set up the company, originally as a fit-out firm, in 1977 with Jack Lovell. Morgan, who turns 66 on New Year’s Eve, does not go in for big statements – it’s not his style – so what he is saying is quite some admission.

The firm’s previous best performance was the near £89m pre-tax profit it posted in 2019, but this year analysts are expecting the figure to be around the £127m mark. It last slipped into the red in 2015 – the result of two problem contracts it inherited when it bought Amec’s construction and regeneration business in 2007 – and has not racked up an exceptional item since, of which Morgan is equally proud.

“We’re not the people who want to go out and do the trophy jobs, necessarily,” Morgan says from the firm’s head office in central London. “We’re a bit cautious, a bit careful. We do small jobs.” The firm’s typical contract size is £6.5m.

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