Inverkeithing-based Muir Group reported turnover up 30% to £113.9m for the year to January 2026, with group profit before tax rising more than tenfold to over £3m. The growth was driven almost entirely by Muir Construction, the group's contracting arm, where turnover reached £85.7m and profit before tax jumped from £2.2m to £4.8m. Muir Homes, the group's housebuilding division, grew turnover modestly to £20.8m but continued to post a pre-tax loss, albeit a narrower one than the year before, while cash balances across the group strengthened to £21.4m.

The contracting business has been kept busy with repeat work for corporate clients including Abrdn and a run of projects in the whisky industry, among them a distillery build in Inverclyde and a maturation warehouse refurbishment in Kirkcaldy, alongside its wider commercial and public sector workload.

Why it matters for the market

Muir Group's results are a small but telling snapshot of a pattern playing out across several regional contractors: general contracting and commercial work is outperforming speculative housebuilding, which is still being squeezed by higher build costs and softer buyer demand. Where a firm runs both a housebuilding arm and a contracting arm, as Muir does, that split shows up clearly in the numbers, and it lines up with what national housebuilders such as Taylor Wimpey have also been reporting this summer: completions trimmed, margins under pressure, while contracting and infrastructure-adjacent work holds up better.

For a family-owned firm of Muir's size, a tenfold rise in group profit backed by a fuller order book is the kind of result that tends to translate fairly directly into headcount, because growth at this scale is rarely absorbed purely through overtime or subcontracting.

What it means for your career

If you are a commercial or contracts professional based in Fife, Edinburgh or the wider central belt, regional contractors with a strong order book like Muir's are worth a look precisely because they are less visible than the national names, and so face less competition for applicants. Corporate and industrial clients such as distilleries and asset managers tend to want long-term contractor relationships rather than one-off tenders, which makes for steadier project pipelines and more predictable career progression than a firm chasing single competitive bids.

If your background is in housebuilding and you are feeling the squeeze as completions get trimmed across the sector, this result is a reminder that the skills (programme management, subcontractor procurement, site management) transfer reasonably well into general contracting, where demand is currently stronger. Scotland's construction market is smaller and more relationship-driven than England's, so a track record with recognisable regional names carries real weight with the next employer, and firms like Muir, growing off the back of contracting rather than housing, are a sensible place to point that experience.