Sol Construction enjoys a good start to the year

Regional construction and maintenance group Sol Construction, based in Nottingham, has had a “cracking good start to the year”, says finance director John Heard.

As a result, he anticipates that turnover will break the £100m barrier in 2008.

Heard has budgeted for a figure of £77m this year, similar to 2006’s result. He anticipates the surge in Sol’s future orders feeding through the pipeline next year.

“We’re a tap-washer to tower block player,” says Heard. “Our special projects division will work on anything up to £1m in value, while in construction projects we can be working on anything up to £20m, though a lot of our schemes are in the £3m to £5m band.

“What would we be looking especially hard at with a £10m-plus project proposal? Well it would be the quality of the client and the nature of the building, especially the ground conditions.”

Sol follows pre-determined risk pointers. The same rules have been in place for many years and have proved to be “robust”.

As a result, a private developer who tried to pour all the risk (particularly pertaining to ground conditions) onto the contractor would quickly get the cold shoulder.

Buoyant sectors in the Midlands at the moment are education and medical, says Heard.

“We’ve just won a £20m award from Nottingham University, a good client, while in the medical arena we’re going to start on a secure psychiatric unit that is being built outside the ProCure 21 framework – a lot of health authorities see ProCure 21 as not being the most cost-effective procurement route.”