Engineering group Balfour Beatty said it expects to perform well in the second half after "good" trading in the first period, which ends today.
Balfour which earlier this week unveiled a £32 million recommended bid for rival civil engineer Birse said markets have stayed positive and its order book has grown to more than £8.5 billion.
A consensus of analysts expect pretax profits of £145 million, compared with £134 million last year.
The recent financial close of the Birmingham Hospital concession has confirmed over £500 million of construction and electrical and mechanical engineering work and in addition has the potential to generate over £300 million of long-term service revenues, the company said.
In April the company also achieved financial close on the £74 million project to build and upgrade 12 schools in the Birmingham.
Cash generation and working capital performance have also been strong at the London-based company which has the contract to build the £559 million Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Balfour said it had made good progress across the board in the building, building management and services sector, with order books well ahead and major new contracts secured in healthcare, education, commercial building and social housing.
The civil and specialist engineering and services business has also continued to perform strongly, winning major new projects in UK road maintenance, civil engineer-ing, power engineering and utilities, as well as in Hong Kong, Dubai and Australia.
However, Balfour said the performance of its rail engineering and services business, has, as anticipated, reflected the absence of last year's oneoff contract settlements and of generally lower levels of activity for UK rail infrastructure operator Network Rail.
It said progress has been good on the major rail contracts at Heathrow Terminal 5 and work on the London Underground track renewal programme continues to accelerate.
Balfour said the Metronet London Underground maintenance and renewal concessions in which it has a 20 per cent stake continued to make satisfactory progress in most areas, although there had been well-publicised and controversial delays to the station upgrade programme and some operating problems.
These were being actively looked at, said the company in a statement.
The company will announce its interim results for the year to June 30 on August 16.
