Our purpose is to build the foundations for a sustainable future.
Market potential
While we are the world’s largest geotechnical specialist contractor, we still have potential to grow our market share in our chosen regions. Our business units are designed to understand their local markets whilst leveraging the group’s scale and expertise.
This combination delivers the engineered solutions and operational excellence that drive market leadership.
Variety of projects and sectors
Our projects are spread across all construction sectors and vary in scale, location, end use and geotechnical technique. Project value is typically between £25k and £10m, usually short duration and with an average value of £560,000.
Diverse global market
We operate across continents and all sectors of the construction industry, from residential to infrastructure. Our portfolio covers diverse global markets which enhances our resilience to trade through national cyclicality.
Diverse customer base
We have a wide customer base and many repeat customers. Our largest customer in 2025 represented just c.4% of the Group’s revenue. We mostly serve as a subcontractor working for a general contractor; however, sometimes we also contract directly with ultimate client organisations.
Growth potential in fragmented market
We have three types of competitor. Type one is the global geotechnical contractor, of which there are three, but not all are present in all markets. Type two is general contracting owned. Type three is local competition with low overheads operating in a small region.
Specialist subsector with higher margins
Geotechnical specialist contracting is an important but niche subsector that commands higher margins than general construction. Typically geotechnical contracting is around 0.5% of the construction market.
Favourable market trends
Urbanisation
Infrastructure demand including mega projects
The need to build and renew infrastructure for expanding cities and their suburbs will drive increased public investment in infrastructure in sectors including transport (road, rail), water (including sewerage and sanitation) and defence.
Our business is structured to provide a local focus through our extensive branch network and offices located in major metropolitan areas. This local presence keeps us close to our customers and the opportunities in these markets. Our local teams can rely on the scale of the Group for support in engineering and to mobilise all equipment and people needed to complete any project we take on.
Demographic shifts
Technically demanding foundations
Population growth and ageing populations will require expansion and adaptation of structures in urban spaces (residential, healthcare). Larger, taller buildings and those on brownfield sites need more technically demanding foundations.
Our global strength from the expertise of our engineers and market-leading product portfolio ensures we can design and deliver the best solutions, while our project management capabilities mean we can integrate other subcontractors and deliver ‘turnkey’ contracts. This reduces the number of interfaces for our customers to manage and reduces risk.
Resource efficiency and decarbonisation
Value engineering and solutions innovation
Demand to reduce costs of construction and reduce consumption of carbon-intensive or scarce materials, increasing importance of geotechnical value engineering and innovation in solutions.
Our engineers regularly value engineer and design solutions for our customers. Through this we remove cost and carbon by reducing material usage, which can also reduce construction time and risk for our customers. We share knowledge and experience among our global teams so that we can bring best practice and innovation to all customers' projects.
Resilience and climate adaptation
Energy transition and resilience projects
Increased public and private investments towards energy transition and climate resilience, boosting demand in energy infrastructure, flood defences and structures more resilient to acts of nature.
We deploy products into markets in which we see customer demand. This capability combined with our capability to mobilise skilled people and equipment, means we can complete complex projects even in remote areas. If we find true white space in any market or we see the opportunity for faster growth through inorganic means, we have the balance sheet strength for value-accretive acquisitions.
Adoption of technology
Data centres and advanced manufacturing
AI workloads more compute-intensive, creating demand for data centre capacity and advanced manufacturing facilities in developed and emerging markets.
We are sector agile in the projects that we take on and are not tied to any one subsector of the construction market. Our local teams pivot to higher-growth market sectors and customers. This is a key driver of our revenue resilience and growth.