100 years of building the future

Firsts
Our first commission: Taking over the operation of tramways in Kent and Bedfordshire brought in our first £5,000.

Our first construction contract: Further successes on other tramways around the country led to our first construction contract for the Fife tramway system, extending the line to Dunfermline in a contract worth £141,450.

Balfour Beatty played a key role in the war effort, which prompted a shift of focus as our resources were switched to military purposes. Our first major civil engineering project was the construction of a major hydro-electric scheme at Kinlochleven, which included building a five-mile aqueduct in Scotland to supply water to an aluminium manufacturing operation.

Worth £2.5m, our largest project to date employed 3,000 men and was designed to exploit the vast potential of hydro-electric power held in Scotland’s highland lochs. The 15-mile tunnel was driven through mountains bringing hydro power to the British Aluminium Company.

1926 Birth of the National Grid
In the same year the Central Electricity Board was set up to construct the National Grid, at a cost of £26.7m. Balfour Beatty played a prominent role in delivery.

The Churchill Barriers
Our support for the war effort included the construction of the Churchill Barriers in the Orkney Islands to protect the British naval base at Scapa Flow from the threat of German U-boats. The scale of the defences was vast, involving half a million cubic yards of quarried rock and 300,000 tonnes of concrete blocks. It was completed in 1943.

1945 - Post war Nationalisation
Once the war was over, reconstruction began and Balfour Beatty was responsible for installing 100kW of power plant, erecting 230 miles of transmission lines, railway tunnel repairs and opencast coal mining. However, the new Labour government’s policy of nationalisation altered our operating environment significantly. While we continued to be a major force in the electricity sector, we also expanded internationally and became a major supplier to the London Underground.

The emerging nuclear power sector provided an exciting new challenge, and in 1957 we began work on a power station in Berkeley, USA.

1959 - Balfour Beatty hits 50
The company celebrated “50 years of power development and services as a complete organisation with design, construction, operation and management of engineering projects in any part of the world”.

Balfour Beatty brought vital new power generation and transmission capacity to Malaysia, Kenya, Tanganyika and Nigeria, where the Kainji dam opened in 1969. Vital new water systems were also provided in the Jordan Valley.

Balfour Beatty began construction of the £350m Mina Jebel Ali port in Dubai. The project included nine miles of quays, 1¼ miles of wharves, a tanker berth and a block yard producing 65,000 44-ton concrete blocks. 5,500 workers were employed and completed the port 12 months ahead of schedule, perhaps because the project was personally supervised by the ruler of Dubai himself!

Work began on a tunnel connecting England and France, bringing an idea that had existed since Napoleonic times to life. Construction was undertaken by a 10-company consortium in which Balfour Beatty was a leading member. It remains one of the greatest construction achievements of all time, creating the world’s longest (37.5km) undersea tunnel in difficult geology. The efficiency of the construction project is worthy of note; from the British side an average progress of 150m per week.

1995 - Barking power station completed
Balfour Beatty completed the 1,000MW combined cycle gas-fired plant in east London, at a cost of £370m. The low emissions station generates at better than 50% thermal efficiency and helped to prepare Balfour Beatty for its profitable entry into the new PPP market.

The Group was responsible for the integration and execution of all rail links to the terminal, which included extensions to the Heathrow Express and Piccadilly line, a link road to the M25 and the construction of a rail station equivalent in size to six football pitches. The contract was worth £450m.

2004 - Building Schools
The announcement that Balfour Beatty was the preferred bidder for Birmingham Schools brought the number of schools projects to five. The others being located in Stoke, Rotherham, North Lanarkshire and Nottinghamshire.

Overseas, the Group expanded its presence in Hong Kong with the purchase of 50% of Gammon Construction from Skanska.

Balfour Beatty became the UK’s leading utilities contractor with a series of high profile wins in water, gas and electricity.

The Group reached financial close on the £559m hospital project, which is the largest healthcare community development outside London. Set to open in 2010, the hospital was Balfour Beatty’s 20th PPP concession and will accommodate over 1,300 beds – 21% more than the facilities it will replace.

The acquisition of Exeter International Airport marked a new strategy of taking our investment business beyond the UK PPP market.

2008 - Building military accommodation in the US
The acquisition of Centex Construction, a leading US construction management company, and GMH, a major player in the US PPP military accommodation market, enhanced our major domestic presence in the US.