The legacy contract write-offs revealed by construction firm Galliford Try (GFRD) at £98m effectively wipe out two-thirds of the £154m forecast pre-tax profit for 2017.

Galliford has overhauled its risk management and operating performance processes to ensure that ‘new work contains sufficient allowances for risk, margin and inflation,’ but heavy damage has already been done.

The company plans to take a one-off £98m hit to complete contracted work, 80% of which is down to just two Scottish projects. The troublesome work is set for completion in mid-2017 and mid-2018 respectively.