What happened

OHOB Holdings, parent of the family-run contractor O'Halloran & O'Brien, reported pre-tax profit up 15% to £25.1m in the year to March 2026, from £21.8m the year before, even as turnover fell by a fifth to £294m from £367m, Construction Enquirer and Construction News reported this week. Operating margin strengthened to 6.5% from 5.2%. The group, chaired by Tom O'Brien and built from groundworks roots into a wider construction and civils business spanning brands including B&T Plant Hire, Riverdale Developments, Keady Construction and utilities firm Forsa, said the turnover drop was driven by continued delays to high-rise residential schemes caught up in Building Safety Act approvals.

The encouraging part of the update is what comes next. The Building Safety Regulator has been working through a backlog of Gateway 2 applications, the pre-construction approval stage that has held up tall residential schemes across the country, and industry reporting suggests it intends to clear all but a handful of the 91 outstanding applications by the end of the year, with newer applications increasingly turning around inside the prescribed 12-week window.

Why it matters

A contractor growing profit while shrinking turnover is usually a story about discipline, taking on less work but managing it more tightly, rather than a story about a booming market. OHOB's numbers fit that pattern. But the Gateway 2 backlog clearing matters well beyond one family firm's accounts. High-rise residential has been one of the most stalled parts of the market since the Building Safety Act came into force, with schemes sitting in approval limbo rather than being cancelled outright. If the regulator genuinely clears that backlog this year, a meaningful chunk of paused tall building work starts moving again, and it moves roughly in step across the sector rather than trickling out over years.

What it means for your career

If you have spent the last two years watching high-rise residential schemes stall at the point where they should have gone on site, this is the clearest signal yet that the freeze is ending. Site managers, project managers and quantity surveyors with genuine high-rise experience have effectively been sitting on skills the market has not needed at full volume, and that is about to change. Fire safety and Building Safety Act compliance roles, principal designer support and gateway application specialists in particular should see demand climb as more schemes clear Gateway 2 and move into delivery. For anyone currently in a lower-rise or groundworks role who came up through a firm like OHOB, this is also the moment to start positioning for a move onto taller schemes before the wider market catches on that the logjam has broken. London and the other city centres where most stalled tall residential sits are where that hiring will show up first.