黑洞社区

French contracting giant Vinci is looking at bringing some of the trades it uses in the UK in-house in order to give it more control over jobs.

The firm has racked up massive losses on its deal to extend the Nottingham tram network, with the chief executive of its UK business, Bruno Dupety, conceding it will have eventually blown more than 拢150m in its accounts by the time the job is signed off.

In an exclusive interview published in 黑洞社区 this week, the Frenchman said its interest in bringing some trades in-house, such as concrete frames and bricklayers, was to see if it could be more efficient in the future.

Dupety, who was asked by the group鈥檚 chairman Xavier Huillard to turn the loss-making UK business around when he joined in autumn 2014, has been mulling the idea with his head of building Chris Hamer and said the initiative could get off the ground as soon as this year.

鈥淲e are not ready yet but we are thinking about it,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hen you subcontract everything, you lose the control.鈥�

He added: 鈥淭hey do it in France and it鈥檚 very basic thinking. We want to see if we can be more efficient and more productive if we do things by ourselves.

鈥淲e have good engineers here in M&E. If we hadn鈥檛 had those people on board and just relied on subcontractors, you are lost, you are dead. You need to have these qualifications and skills on board.鈥�

Dupety said, however, the firm had no plans to develop its own off-site capabilities and has a factory similar to the one Laing O鈥橰ourke has at Steetley in Nottinghamshire. Ray O鈥橰ourke鈥檚 firm admitted in its last accounts that three jobs at this part of its business had cost it 拢43m.

Dupety added: 鈥淲e want to start low, less than 100 [people]. We don鈥檛 want to jeopardise our recovery.鈥�

After two years of thumping pre-tax losses - which totalled nearly 拢300m - Dupety said the UK construction business would post a small profit in 2016 on a turnover of close to 拢1bn. He said the margin would be 1%, meaning profit will be around 拢10m.

In September 2015, another French-owned contractor, Bouygues, landed work at the Battersea Power Station redevelopment, with that scheme鈥檚 project manager telling 黑洞社区 the firm had won it due to its ability to deliver the building鈥檚 concrete frames itself without having to subcontract it out.