Carillion scoops £190m of schools contracts

Carillion has won a £190m schools contract to rebuild schools across the Midlands in its latest trading statement, which shows the company’s overall turnover for 2014 is likely to be in line with that for last year.

The construction giant told the stock exchange this morning that it has been chosen as selected bidder for the Public Private Partnership project to deliver the Midlands private finance tranche of the Priority School Building Programme (PSBP).

Carillion has said it will pump £8m of its own equity into the project to replace substandard buildings at eight schools in the west and east midlands, which it expects to generate construction and services revenues of approximately £190m.

Overall, Carillion said this morning that it expected total revenues to be similar for those in 2013, with growth in Middle East and UK construction services likely to be offset by a reduction in revenue from Public Private Partnership projects.

With £4.6bn of new work won in the year to date, Carillion said that it expected its total order book plus probable orders at the end of 2014 to be over £18.5bn. The company said it expected the value of its total pipeline of contract opportunities to increase to over £39bn by the end of 2014 compared to £37.5bn at this point last year.  The group’s operating margin was expected to be maintained at a “broadly similar level” to that in 2013, despite the fact that most of the work being delivered in 2014 was won during the downturn.  

The trading statement concluded that Carillion was “well positioned to make further progress over the medium term” on the back of an expected continued recovery in 2015.

The firm is led by chief executive Richard Howson (pictured).