Balfour Beatty Plc: Competitive Analysis (an Analysis of Balfour Beatty's Business & Competitive Position)

Balfour Beatty plc: Competitive Analysis (An Analysis of Balfour Beatty's Business & Competitive Position)

Introduction & Background

Balfour Beatty (Balfour) is a world class engineering, construction and services group and its strategic and competitive position can be investigated using management tools such as a SWOT analysis as shown in Appendix 1. The breadth and depth of Balfour's expertise ranges from design, construction, equipping, manning and the management of buildings. It focuses on international markets for rail, road, utility systems, building and complex structures.

Balfour's long-term strategy is to; develop its business through overseas expansion and through acquisitions and disposals . . . it aims to be market leader through long term customer relationships and well developed supply chains.

However, the very fact that Balfour has so many diverse product and service offerings could prove a weakness, as much of the management focus will be on maintaining and ensuring the quality of the services/products provided. These services are also spread throughout the globe. It's not surprising therefore that Balfour has well over 20 different operating companies to manage these services, but that in may create duplications in terms of administrative and accounting support for instance and therefore unnecessary costs.

Despite this, one of the main drivers for the business is to create sustainable partnerships in all areas of the business, whether with suppliers, buyers, customers or stakeholders. From Porter's Five Forces analysis (see Appendix 2), we can see those forces influencing the business and these will be discussed in more detail later.

Balfour's stated strategy of acquiring businesses also creates a constant headache and could possibly lead to management taking their eye of the ball. The ongoing need to adjust and re-adjust the organisation and to adopt the requirements of the newly acquired businesses is a major concern. And yet, for an organisation to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, it requires change.

There are also a number of social, technological, economic and political (STEP) influences (see Appendix 3) which influences the strategic direction that Balfour follows. Balfour has