Buoyant NMC battles skills shortage

North Midland Construction has plans to expand turnover to £100m a year by 2005, said managing director Robert Moyle this week. Rapid growth saw staff numbers soar by 120 last year, but the search for new individuals with the right skills is proving to be a struggle.

Last year's turnover of £78m was a big rise on 2001's figure of £63m. It was aided by early contributions from two fledgling regions - the North West and the South West. Once they are better established, Moyle's next move will be to push either into Scotland or the east of England.

He said: "We took on 120 new people last year, bringing our total in-house employee number up to 620, but we are struggling to find the right skills and our age profile is rising. I'd say it was now mid-40s. It's hard to attract bricklayers, joiners, engineers and qualified site staff such as quantity surveyors.

"The industry has to enhance its image. For our part, we are sponsoring more people through university and have more apprentices - there are 13 now and we'll look to add 10 more next year. On the other side of the coin, our churn-rate is low."

The group has three operating divisions: civil engineering, highways and telecommunications.

Civil engineering is the largest of the three, with an annual turnover of £28m, of which 75% is secured through framework agreements. "The loss-making contracts have been eliminated and we're hitting 3% margins, which is top quartile performance," said Moyle.

"Having developed our format - to be a one-stop shop - in both the Midlands and the North East/Yorkshire, we are moving the template and knocking on doors in other regions. The strategy works: our two home regions account for 70% of turnover, while 20% now comes from the North West and 10% from the South West," he added.