Europe Hub Operating Review
Hub's group revenue (FY25: £2.3bn)
Hub's pre-exceptional gross profit (FY25: £177.0m)
I am proud of the achievements delivered by our people in FY26. Our business is guided by a clear purpose: to push the boundaries of what’s possible in service of humanity, through our values of care, integrity, and courage.
Through their dedication and expertise, we have delivered critical buildings and infrastructure, strengthened our Hub’s order book to £15.6bn, and continued to build a resilient business ideally positioned for the future.
Our performance is reflected in strong financial results and a client satisfaction score of 80.1 per cent (FY25: 73.1 per cent).
We also made meaningful progress in areas critical to our long-term success. Employee engagement reached 79 per cent, the highest level since 2018. We updated our approach to attracting and developing talent and had record-breaking success in our recent early talent attraction campaigns. We strengthened our focus on safety through our Raising the Bar campaign and our annual Rethinking Safety Day, reinforcing a culture of care, inclusion, and wellbeing. At the same time, we reduced Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions in the UK by 26 per cent against our FY23 baseline in line with science-based targets, and delivered £265m of social value to the communities in which we operate.
I would like to pay tribute to our team in the United Arab Emirates who have been impacted by regional instability, which began at the end of February 2026. They have been exemplary models of care, integrity, and courage throughout the conflict; we have supported them by prioritising their safety and wellbeing while pausing work temporarily as required to ensure a safe return to operations.
We will continue to monitor the ongoing situation and support our team in the region.
Delivering the plan we set out to achieve with certainty and resilience
In FY26, we focused on delivering projects with certainty while strengthening resilience through disciplined growth in priority sectors.
Our order book reflects the strength of our delivery capability and client relationships, while our disciplined approach ensures we secure work that aligns to our operating model. Alongside this, we have maintained a strong financial position, with group revenue of £2.6bn (FY25: £2.3bn), a pre-exceptional gross margin of 9.3 per cent (FY25: 7.8 per cent), and a net cash position of £265.3m (FY25: £66.8m).
These results ensure we are well positioned to navigate market and geopolitical uncertainty and continue delivering sustainable growth.
What sets us apart
The strength, capability, and commitment of our people differentiate us. Across the Europe Hub, our 12,972 skilled individuals, spanning our staff and trade specialists, worked collaboratively across our delivery and specialist trading businesses.
Our Specialist Trading Business Group continues to provide a clear competitive advantage. Through manufacturing-led construction, early client engagement, and modern methods of construction (MMC), we are enhancing productivity, quality, and carbon performance.
We strengthened off-site manufacturing and modular solutions, including:
- Achieving record volumes through all our UK manufacturing facilities; and
- Continued investment in plant within the Select business to support safety enhancements, including becoming the first UK company to implement anti-entrapment measures on mobile elevating work platforms.
Investment in our people
We invest in the skills needed to industrialise construction and unlock opportunity for our people.
During the year, our first three cohorts of assembly specialists completed their programme. Developed in collaboration with Barnsley College and T3 Training & Development, this new specialism is supported by the UK’s first dedicated MMC training facility, which we opened in 2024.
We also strengthened engagement across our front-line directly employed trade specialists through our first trade specialist engagement survey, achieving a 77 per cent score and establishing a baseline for continued improvement.
We have changed our terminology for our front-line workers, who will now be known as ‘trade specialists’ instead of ‘workforce’ to better recognise their skills and expertise. It is a first step that sets us up for longer-term plans to move from trades to technicians.
Leading the way in green energy
FY26 was a defining year for our work in nuclear and green energy. At Hinkley Point C, our teams continue to deliver one of the UK’s most significant infrastructure projects, delivering facilities that will provide zero-carbon electricity for around six million homes.
Advanced manufacturing and digital technologies improved productivity at scale with Reactor Unit 2 taking 20–30 per cent less time to build than Reactor Unit 1.
The investment we made in our advanced rebar manufacturing facility at Avonmouth two years ago has come to bear. Our facility has halved the time our people need to be on site compared to what they would using traditional methods.
This expertise will be carried forward into Sizewell C, where key milestones were achieved, including Final Investment Decision and the signing of a Programme Alliance Agreement to deliver the civil works. Enabling works are now underway marking the next phase of delivery for another nationally significant project.
We also secured further contracts with National Grid to deliver critical high-voltage infrastructure.
An enduring presence in Oxford
We deliver complex, high-quality projects for leading clients across the science and technology sector.
In September 2025, we successfully handed over the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities at the University of Oxford ahead of schedule.
Using modern methods of construction, we reduced the construction programme to 2.5 years, minimising disruption to the community and enabling earlier fit-out and commissioning.
Our delivery approach also played a significant role in the Centre becoming certified as the largest Passivhaus university building in Europe and the world’s first Passivhaus certified concert hall.
We continue to deliver the Ellison Institute of Technology, Oxford, which will be a global centre for science and medicine. With the project due to hand over in 2027, the team achieved major milestones towards completion, including the topping out of two of the main buildings.
We also delivered Oxford North Phase 1 – precision constructed facilities for world-changing science and research.
Beyond Oxford, we signed two contracts in June 2025 with the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs to finalise the detailed design and deliver two main Science Hub buildings at the National Biosecurity Centre in Weybridge.
Healthcare
We strengthened our position in the healthcare sector through our appointment in March 2026 to the Hospital 2.0 Alliance, as part of the New Hospital Programme (NHP). Our deep healthcare expertise, paired with our industrialised approach to construction, has positioned us to deliver the future of healthcare in the UK.
Having completed enabling works in 2025, we signed the main contract to deliver the five-storey Sussex Cancer Centre in Brighton, which is part of the Government’s NHP. The team is completing the design phase, with main construction work due to begin in summer 2026.
At Yorkshire’s Calderdale Royal Hospital, we are working with the Trust to progress detailed designs for the new emergency departments and inpatient wards with a focus on modern methods of construction, decarbonisation, and operational energy performance. Subject to full business case approval, main construction work will begin in summer 2026.
In Scotland, we continue to work closely with NHS Lanarkshire on the design of the Monklands Replacement Project and we have been progressing well on site with the enabling works as part of our pre-construction services agreement.
Data Centres
In the UK and UAE, we strengthened our reputation as a leading delivery partner of data centres. 80 per cent of our recent data centre projects are delivered for repeat clients, and over the past two decades we have delivered 20 data centres. In FY26, we handed over 29MW of white space and were appointed to deliver the UAE's largest data centre (Project Pilot).
Looking ahead
The progress we have made in FY26 provides a strong foundation for the future.
We will maintain our focus on safety, certainty in delivery, disciplined growth in the right sectors, and continued investment in innovation, sustainability, and our people.
By doing so, we continue to strengthen the Europe Hub and play a leading role in shaping a more productive, sustainable, and resilient construction sector.
Award-winning teams
Our success is driven by the care, integrity, and courage of our people. During FY26, our teams were recognised across the industry for excellence in sustainability, innovation, digital delivery, safety, and
teamwork. Highlights included:
May 2025
Triple win at the Women in Construction and Engineering Award – with our people taking prizes for Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Environment and Sustainability, and Contractor of the Year. Building Controls Industry Association Awards – CHt Enterprise Solutions awarded Building Controls and BEMS Installer of the Year.
July 2025
New Civil Engineer Awards – Laing O’Rourke named Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Leader – Contractor. Digital Construction Awards – Innovation in Health, Safety, and Wellbeing awarded for a solution developed to assess risk and method statements.
November 2025
Techfest Awards – Best Use of Technology: Site Productivity.
December 2025
DCD Global Awards 2025 – in collaboration with Pure Data Centres Group, winner of Middle East and Africa Data Center of the Year Award for Yas Island Hyperscale Campus in Abu Dhabi.
March 2026
Digital Construction Awards – Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities named Digital Project of the Year and Hinkley Point C team awarded Digital Innovation in Productivity.