Steady growth from site services

Munnelly Group, the family owned site services business, reported this week that turnover rose 9% to £181m in the year to March 2026, with pre-tax profit up 15% to £1.8m, Construction Enquirer and Construction News reported. The group, which employs people across eight businesses spanning logistics, security, labour supply and technology services, described the year as "resilient" despite a difficult market for the wider industry.

Chief executive Paul David Munnelly, who took over the role from his father and founder Phil Munnelly, has set out what the group calls its Target 2030 plan. The ambition is to pull its eight businesses closer together so clients can buy pre-construction through to handover from one group, backed by targeted acquisitions between 2026 and 2028. Directors said the plan is "about making the whole worth more than the sum of its parts, for our clients, our people and our shareholders." The group enters the next phase with £7.8m in cash and no bank borrowings.

Why it matters

Munnelly's growth stands out at a time when insolvencies keep running ahead of last year's figures and several contractors have gone into administration, leaving projects and payments in limbo. A site services group growing profit while others struggle says something about where the money is moving: towards firms embedded across energy, water, nuclear, defence and prison expansion, the five sectors Munnelly named as its acquisition targets. These are publicly funded or regulated programmes with multi-year budgets, which gives a buyer more certainty than speculative private development offers right now.

What it means for your career

If you work in site services, logistics or labour supply and your employer touches energy, water, nuclear, defence or custodial work, this is a period to watch for inbound interest rather than outbound risk. Acquisitive groups like Munnelly typically retain management teams and site level staff when they buy a business, so a takeover approach is more often a signal of stability than a threat to your role.

For QSs and commercial managers weighing a move, the sectors Munnelly is targeting are the same ones recruiters keep flagging as resilient. Nuclear new build, water company capital programmes and defence infrastructure are all backed by committed multi-year spend rather than discretionary development budgets. If your current employer is exposed mainly to speculative housing or commercial development, and you have transferable experience in regulated or public sector delivery, now is a reasonable moment to test the market in those directions.

Site services and enabling works roles, often overlooked next to main contractor jobs, are also worth a second look. Growth here tends to run ahead of headline contractor hiring because it scales with the volume of activity across many sites rather than any single scheme. Commercial and operations people who understand logistics, access and labour supply at scale are in a stronger position than the job titles might suggest.