Bouygues UK plans to double its annual turnover to £200m

Bouygues UK plans to double its annual turnover to £200m in the next three years and to achieve this organically. Managing director Pascal Minault made it clear that Bouygues has no desire to expand through acquisition.

Globally, Bouygues has an annual construction turnover of £14bn. In the UK, the group's turnover runs close to £500m from four operations: Bouygues UK, which is mostly involved in building Ecovert FM, established on the back of PFI wins in the UK Colas, the road surfacing specialist contractor and ETDE, an M&E operation.

"Based on the size of Bouygues UK's orderbook and the volume of work we have at the pre-bidding stage, we should get to £200m," said Minault. "The organic route is less risky. The downside is that it takes time. But it excites our people when they are told they must expand their business."

Minault said Bouygues UK makes a 5% profit margin. Asked if this is the result of such a strong focus on PFI work, he replied: "No, not as such."

The three main reasons, he said, were: "First, it's because we have a strong internal technical procurement team. Second, we've been able to build on Bouygues Construction's global capability. And third, we are efficient when it comes to design and procurement."

Global parent Bouygues Construct-ion has invested heavily in a research and development project looking into whole-life costings. Every element, such as radiators and floor coverings, for example, is put under the microscope and different technical options are compared under such headings as price of construction, price of maintenance, expected life, cost of removal and cost of replacement.

The most suitable option is flagged up and becomes the group standard.

"It leads to us using higher specification products that cause less disruption to clients," said Minault, adding that the cost assumptions are shared with everyone, including Bouygues UK.

Many of Bouygues UK's projects are built in concrete. "This is because we have an efficient system," said Minault. "It's our heritage, it's the transfer of what we do in France.

"The group has the ability to come up with efficient concrete designs. Also, we have proprietary formwork and we have a workforce and supervisors who have been fully trained."

Bouygues UK came to the UK 10 years ago. Its first contract was the £10m job for a French client developing the former Commonwealth Club in London. That scheme was built by an existing Bouygues subsidiary, but gave the group a foot in the door.