Builder is bucking the trend with new contracts

Lumsden & Carroll said it has already won enough work through its Leeds office to ensure it will break through the £10m turnover barrier this year, up from £7.9m last year.

It hopes to take this up to £15m, however, on the back of repeat work work from clients in the public and private sector.

The firm opened at Thorpe Park in Leeds in 2007 with the support of late football manager Sir Bobby Robson. Since then it has grown staff from two to 17 and turnover from £1.5m to at least £10m this year.

Chris Walker, regional director, said they had managed to grow because they carried out work at competitive rates.

“We anticipate we will do a turnover of £15m – that is a mixture of public and private sector work but predominantly private.

“We are getting growth from repeat business and new business (although) we are having to work hard in terms of name recognition.”

The Leeds office of Lumsden & Carroll, which is based in Bowburn in County Durham, has won several contracts this year, including deals for £4m to build a rehabilitation centre in Chesterfield for social care charity Turning Point and £2.4m to build grain stores in Full Sutton in York for farming business Albanwise, as well as work at Cottingham High School in Hull, Leeds Trinity University College in the Horsforth area of the city and at Kirkstall Medical Centre, also in Leeds.

It also recently completed a £2.55m scheme at the Stolze Flacconage glass bottle manufacturing plant in Knottingley, West Yorkshire.

Mr Walker said the firm has willingly taken on contracts in the region of £10,000, as well as seven-figure deals, in the hope of winning more business with a client in the long-run.

Its success is in stark contrast to the wider industry, which has seen workloads suffer as major developments are mothballed or cancelled. A ConstructionSkills report published last week said the industry would contract by one per cent this year with the loss of up to 76,000 jobs before it returns to growth.

Mr Walker said businesses were “running for cover” when the recession began in autumn 2009. He is not predicting a swift bounceback in the economy but argued that the slump presents opportunities, because land prices have fallen.

“There is an element of nervousness...(but) you could say there has never been a better time to build because it is cheaper.”

Some of its education contracts have been driven by a booming population in Bradford, Mr Walker added.

He said schools needed extra capacity and improvements which were being done through re-designs in light of public sector spending cuts, which have seen Labour’s Building Schools for the Future scheme largely scrapped.

Last year Lumsden & Carroll won work including a £1.6m contract for alterations to Thorncliffe Park industrial estate in Sheffield and for £412,000 to build Silsden Children’s Centre in West Yorkshire.

Mr Walker joined Lumsden & Carroll in July 2007 having worked at director level in various construction companies, such as Allenbuild and Harrison Construction.

When Sir Bobby opened Lumsden & Carroll’s Leeds’ office that year, he told the Yorkshire Post that the business had shown resilience, adding: “I know the parent company, Esh Group, very well. I lived for many years in a village called Esh in Durham.

“It’s a company doing well in the North East. They have the ambition to do just as well in Yorkshire.”

The firm went on to notch up contract wins, including multi-million-pound deals with Yorkshire Water, the Environment Agency and Bradford-based Morrisons.

It also has satellite offices in Malton and Ripon in North Yorkshire, although these are to support work with Yorkshire Water, rather than to bring in new contracts.