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69. Balfour Beatty

• Head of IT: Darryn Warner, CIO
• Industry: Construction
• Website: www.balfourbeatty.com

Balfour Beatty was founded by two Scots in 1909 and is today the 15th largest construction firm in the world and one of the largest in the UK. Recently it has been involved in the Olympics site build, M25 expansion and the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham. In 2003 Balfour Beatty began a spree of major acquisitions with the takeover of Mansell for £42m. In 2008 it expanded into the military housing business with the buy-out  of GMH Military Housing in the US and in 2009 it added US construction management firm Parsons Brinkerhoff . In March 2009 Balfour Beatty was prosecuted by the Information Commissioner for breaching the Data Protection Act when it was revealed it held a database of workers union membership and political beliefs.

IT Leader: Darryn Warner, CIO

In role since: May 2007

Reporting line:  To the CFO, Duncan Mcgrath

Board level seat:  No

IT budget: £100 million , approximately one per cent of turnover of £10.5bn

IT estate and or number of log on accounts under the control of the IT leader: 40,000 screens approximately, 52,000 employees approximately

Level of the workforce that relies on technology to carry out their tasks: 100 per cent some form of technology usage, approximately 85 per cent use computers

IT staff currently employed: 900

Split between in-house/outsourced staff:  10 per cent outsourced

IT management team and reporting structure:  Has an applications director, an infrastructure elivery director, enterprise architecture directors, vender management, information security, PMO and several back office support roles who look after HR and finance

Primary technology platforms at the organisation: Various ERP, Oracle packages, some SAP, large collection of CMS and autoCAD

Primary technology suppliers:  Microsoft, Dell for hardware, BT

Strategic aim of the CIO and IT operations for the next financial year: Continue to deploy Oracle technology to the business in the UK.  Global aim is to champion convergence agenda to reduce the complexity and the cost of the IT estate and we are developing better ways of knowledge sharing across the organisation.

Technologies considered by the leader to offer their organisation potential: Use both Cloud and virtualisation in the organisation.

Future transformation and technology vision for the organisation:  See technology playing a more important role in how they generate shareholder value and business.Will help with the use of delivery models to support BIM and organisational and employee mobility and to be able to create better management.

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