Page 9 - Business Review 2016

9 Business Review 2016
CEO’s review
BUILDING ON OUR LEGACY
FOR A BETTER MURPHY
We can look back on 2016 with considerable pride.
As well as launching our new business strategy, I’m proud
that Murphy and its people continued to deliver. It was a year
when we over-achieved against our financial goals - delivering
nearly £614m of revenue, ending the year with a cash
balance of £97m and increasing our profit before tax
to £23.3m.
In parallel, and no less important, we built up our resilience
as a business by strengthening our contingency. If we meet
unexpected challenges we have the resources to deal
with them.
It was a year of measurable achievements, together with real
progress in our culture, our profile, customer perception and
our ability to harness all our skills as One Murphy.
The Ten Year Plan: year one
Our Ten Year Plan is about sustainable growth and taking
Murphy to the next level. But this is not simply a set of target
numbers and a determination to hit them. The plan is like
construction itself - making sure that every constituent
part of our business is professional, rock-solid and able
to support the ambitious plans we have for our development.
Change is never easy but, very quickly, it has become the new
normal at Murphy. I’ve been delighted by the overwhelming
backing and engagement the plan has generated. There is no
shortage of business school theories on change, or armies
of expensive consultants keen to direct us, but I’m a firm
believer that change is most effective when it comes
from within.
This is already happening right across the business, and one
of the first wins has been to make us work better as a single
entity, regardless of individual disciplines or territories. We’re
reflecting this by using a balanced scorecard across the
company, which incentivises us to perform not just financially,
but across every key metric including health & safety, client
satisfaction, staff retention and overall productivity.
The plan is highly unusual in our industry. It shows confidence
in our business to launch one, and I can already see that
decision has been vindicated. Indeed, we’re proud to share it
with our stakeholders, clients and competitors as we work
our way to becoming a major force in world infrastructure.
Health, safety and the environment
Our values are at the core of our new strategy, not least
our commitment to safety. No commercial or practical
consideration is ever allowed to override the principle
that everyone has a right to a safe place of work.
Whether planning a project, using tools safely or wearing
the right PPE for a given situation, everything starts
with our Never Harm philosophy.
We had 36 incidents during 2016 that resulted
in time away from work. Although our safety culture
is embedded in our daily activities, this number is
unacceptable and we are striving to tackle this.
As well as more safety communications and increasing
site safety inspections, capturing the challenges is
absolutely vital. The thoroughness and speed of our new
‘2-1-2’ safety reporting system has shown that we still
have work to do. We are now capturing more information
quicker than before, and acting on incidents faster than
ever. It has revealed more small incidents than we had
appreciated, as well as ‘near-misses’; these give us vital
learning on hazards that might be waiting.
We are also more advanced than many competitors in
the field of occupational health. We have invested in a
dedicated centre, where we conduct studies into
potential health hazards. Just one example is ‘vibration
white finger’, caused by certain machines and power
tools, and we now equip every user with a special
vibration watch to alert them to safe limits;
an innovation from our Plant business.
Our Never Harm ethos also extends to communities and
their environments. During the year we made excellent
progress on the £250m, environmentally sensitive
Deephams Sewage Treatment Works Upgrade Project for
Thames Water. We also worked in city centres alongside
iconic buildings such as the Houses of Parliament in
London, and in remote locations with nuclear projects
and wind farms, some of which are in Areas of
Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). In every case, it's
our job to tread as lightly and unobtrusively as possible,
and we do.