Understanding Balfour Beatty

Employee figures include joint ventures and associates.

Strong local businesses

Local presence allows us to align with our clients – most of whom are based in a single country – and be closer to them. That allows us to better understand and respond to their needs.

It also means that, as local organisations, our clients value the commitment we show to the communities we serve. By committing to and investing in these communities, we provide training and development, create long term employment opportunities, and support sustainable economic growth. This can be seen across our business through our apprenticeship, graduate training and outreach programmes.

With deep roots in a community we are also able to create resilient businesses by developing a rigorous approach to risk management. Being on-the-ground gives us an intimate understanding of the local operating environment and, crucially, its local supply chain. As most projects in our industry are delivered through that supply chain, local presence helps in every part of our business; and where we take delivery risk ourselves, it's absolutely critical.

We have this deep rooted presence in a number of countries around the world already.

From our foundation in the UK we've built strong domestic businesses in the US, Hong Kong and the Middle East. Experience has taught us that this model works much better than an expeditionary fly-in fly-out approach.

We have then continued to expand our coverage into our chosen target geographies. We aren't starting from scratch in these countries: we already have a presence, in some cases a significant one – gained largely through our acquisition of Parsons Brinckerhoff in 2009.

For example, we now have over 3,000 people in Australia, around 350 in Canada, 300 in South Africa and 300 in India.

These are solid foundations on which to expand our activities in these regions.