Balfour Beatty chief executive Leo Quinn.

Infrastructure group Balfour Beatty recorded a jump in profit for the first half of the year after a bumper performance in its UK construction .

The London-listed firm posted a £20m rise in pre-tax profit for the first six months of the year to £132m, up from £112m last year.

It came as the business’ UK construction arm “achieved its long-standing three per cent margin target earlier than expected”. The division netted a profit from operations margin – which indicates how much profit a business makes from its core activities for every pound of revenue it generates – of 3.6 per cent.

The company benefited from a steady stream of work announced by the UK government with major infrastructure projects including new and ongoing contracts for

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