Chief Executive’s statement We also worked hard to put in place the tools, systems and processes that will help us bid for, win and deliver work more effectively and with greater consistency and collaboration across the group. Our performance Our continuing business recorded a significant uptick in underlying profitability, from £8.5m in the previous reporting year to £10.6m in the current reporting year (pre-exceptional items), driving margin up from 6.8% to 7.6%, over the same period. This was achieved against a turnover of £162.5M declining less than 1% from the previous year despite deferrals associated with the UK defence review and the effects of the pandemic. This encouraging performance is a clear sign that our proven skills and expertise are successfully attracting and delivering high-value work. It also provides early evidence of the success of our strategy, which is to retain and grow market share in our core business areas, build powerful collaborative relationships that draw value from the full breadth of our global capability, and to drive innovation that is closely aligned to both our customers’ and industries’ current and future needs. While this report primarily focuses on the continuing operations, it should be noted that after the year end, our US defence and security business entered a formal insolvency process on 1 February 2022, and it made a material contribution to the continuing operations’ results and those will be restated as discontinued in the subsequent financial year. More detail is provided by David McSweeney, our CFO in the Financial Performance section starting on page 28. Our customers It is something of a paradox that the remote working necessitated by the pandemic has brought us closer to our customers as we worked together to support their vital operations. While it may be hard to quantify the direct financial benefits of these stronger customer relationships, we did see significant order growth during the reporting period as customers ‘caught up’ with activities that were suppressed during the worst periods of the pandemic or looked to new opportunities. More broadly, our markets in defence and security, commercial shipping, environmental services, and critical infrastructure all proved resilient. This highlights the value of our diverse portfolio and the vital nature of our work. Our order book remains healthy, with a strong pipeline of work in place for the year ahead. Our people As an employee benefit trust and a recognised source of expert insight, employees have always been at the heart of our business model, but the ability to attract and retain people is more vital than ever. The launch of our Global Graduate & Apprenticeship Programme is therefore a significant step forward. Input from our own business experts ensures that this 18-month blended learning programme will help graduates and apprentices develop the right skills to grow as part of our global team. At every stage of their careers, we are committed to giving all our employees every opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills and to reach their full potential by working on challenging, leading-edge projects, as well as being able to access a variety of impactful development and training initiatives. In this context, it is pleasing to report that the employee engagement survey conducted during this reporting year achieved an Employee Engagement Index (EEI) score of 76. This is very favourable when benchmarked against other businesses and is the same score as our last survey in 2018, suggesting that we have successfully supported employees during the pandemic. Driving diversity and inclusion We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer, and we are dedicated to eliminating discrimination and encouraging diversity across our entire workforce. To support this, we launched our diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy during the year, informed by data from our employee engagement survey. Our plan of action includes reviewing and enhancing our recruitment processes, templates, and attraction strategies with an inclusion lens, reviewing all our people policies to ensure gender neutral language as well as ensuring our policies are set up to benefit those from under-represented groups and are not indirectly perpetrating any inequalities. During this year of the COVID-19 pandemic we completed the streamlining of our business portfolio and intensified focus on operating performance achieving an increased margin from our continuing operations. BMT Group | Shaping our future 6
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