Balfour Beatty plc, the international infrastructure Group, has issued a confident trading update in advance of its results for the half year ended 26 June 2010.

The company said that further to its Interim Management Statement of 12 May 2010, trading performance continued to be consistent with expectations for the year, commenting:

“At the half-year, our high-quality order book is expected to be ahead of the £14.1 billion reported for 31 December 2009.”

With around half of the Group’s revenue now coming from outside the UK, Balfour Beatty said it was strongly positioned to address the significant long-term infrastructure demands in economies around the world.

According to the latest update, the recent announcement of preferred bidder status on the multi-billion dollar Denver Eagle P3 commuter rail project, in which Balfour Beatty will be responsible for a 50% share of the engineering, procurement and construction contract and a 33% share of the operations and maintenance contract, demonstrates the scale and breadth of projects that the Group is now capable of delivering as a result of having Parsons Brinckerhoff within the Group.

In 2010 there will be a first full-year contribution from Parsons Brinckerhoff, which is performing well and in line with expectations. Integration, including with Heery in the US and Balfour Beatty Management in the UK, has proceeded faster than anticipated and the business is now involved in a number of significant opportunities in conjunction with other parts of the Group.

The Construction Services division is continuing to perform well overall, although good volumes in UK civil infrastructure and Hong Kong have been outweighed by reduced volumes in most other markets, particularly in the US.

In Support Services the Group has had a number of key contract wins, including with QinetiQ and North East Lincolnshire Council. Balfour Beatty expects performance for the year to be weighted towards the second half, following the first-half investment in a national operations centre for facilities management customers and a slow start-up of AMP5 contracts in the water/utilities sector.

The Group has an active pipeline of bids in Infrastructure Investments,  achieving preferred bidder positions on five projects so far this year. Balfour Beatty describes its cash position as remaining robust, with average net cash in excess of £400 million for the first half of 2010 (excluding net debt in PPP subsidiaries), compared with £224 million in the first half of 2009.Overall, the board said it remained confident about the outlook for the Group.