Balfour Beatty has launched a business transformation programme which it said will “drive continual improvement across all businesses” and build a global group which generates substantial shareholder value.

Announced today by group chief executive, Leo Quinn, ‘Build to Last’ also aims to “maximise returns by optimising the value of an integrated Balfour Beatty”.

He said: “The group’s recent trading makes it imperative to gain early momentum in our transformation plans. Whilst further challenges remain, there are clear opportunities to achieve improvements in cash generation and profitability in the near term.

“Balfour Beatty has great strengths across its portfolio – not least in its Investments division, where recent transactions underline the ongoing ability of this business to create value. I continue to believe all our operations should achieve industry-standard performance against what appears to be a beneficial market environment.”

He added: “Longer term, we will shape a group with leadership in key markets, driving best-in-class performance from a platform of strong capability, leaner processes and robust execution.”

In its initial phase, Build to Last will target bringing each business unit to industry-standard performance levels by focusing on four key areas:

Balfour Beatty said a number of steps have already been taken across the UK and the US to give the programme rapid traction, including establishing a Build to Last programme office tracking UK and US workstreams.

New appointments are being rolled out among the senior leadership team in targeted areas, including IT, commercial and project execution and business process re-engineering.

Management will now work on reducing reporting layers and improving efficiency to strip out costs.