Charting the rise of region's construction giant Carillion
Carillion was created in 1999 from the demerger of the Tarmac Group.
It took on the construction and support services part of the group, which had been formed as Tarmac Ltd in 1905.
Carillion – chosen as a neutral name and a corruption of carillon meaning a peal of bells – enjoyed massive success in the first decade of the 21st Century and by 2012 was ranked as the top business in the Black Country.
It had grown from employing 14,000 – 2,000 in the West Midlands – at the time of the demerger to 45,000, with annual revenue of £5.1 billion.
Over the following years the group continued to win new construction and outsourcing contracts and in 2014 had been poised to merge with troubled construction giant Balfour Beatty.
The potential £3 billion tie-up foundered on Carillion’s wish to cancel Balfour’s planned £200 million sale of its US business Parsons Brinckerhoff.
Balfour, Britain's biggest construction group, insisted that the sale was a ‘key strategic objective’ and concluded that the merger was not in the best interest of shareholders.
The same year Carillion's order book had grown to £18.5 billion thanks to new work at home and abroad.
It was awarded the £75m contract to increase capacity at Liverpool’s Anfield Stadium with a new main stand.
Carillion had also won a string of major building projects in the Middle East and £1.7bn of support services deals in the UK.
One of Carillion's biggest projects in the West Midlands, the Library of Birmingham, had been completed on in 2013 after work started in 2010.
Carillion had already bought several well-known companies including Mowlem in 2006, Alfred McAlpine in 2008, Vanbots in 2008 and Eaga in 2011.
It had been involved in 150 projects building new or refurbishing schools and academies. Many of these have been through public private partnership projects.
It also delivered many PPP hospitals and held contracts for the Highways Agency’s Managed Motorways programme as well as long-term road maintenance contracts.
Carillion took on all types of civil engineering works ranging from flood defences to transport improvements and from airports to industrial projects.
In Canada it provided facilities management and maintenance services for hospitals that its has built under PPP arrangements and has also established leading positions in the road maintenance markets of Ontario and Alberta. In the Middle East it had a joint venture in the United Arab Emirates that provides facilities management services, primarily for the buildings it constructed.
Carillion major projects in the UK included the construction of the Government’s Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, the Royal School of Military Engineering and The Joint Services Headquarters at Northwood.
