May Gurney today confirmed a drop in underlying pre-tax profit to £1.1m from £14.5m last time on a turnover of £338.9m which was up from £324.7m.

The figures followed a shock profit warning in September which saw former chief executive Phllip Fellowes-Prynne suddenly leave the company.

Operating margins also dropped to 3.7% from 4.5%.

May Gurney took a one-off hit of £10m for the closure of its Facilities Services division while the Scottish utilities division was hit by Scotia Gas Networks reducing its outsourcing work.

The firm said: “An external review has been carried out on 13 of our key contracts across the Group, which resulted in no major issues being found.”

Margaret Ford, Chairman of May Gurney, said: “May Gurney’s first-half performance was in line with our revised expectations.

“We have taken steps to reinforce commercial disciplines and the plans we put in place to address the operational issues we announced in September are on track.

“Our strong commercial market positions are reflected by the fact that we have secured more than £314 million of business in the first-half.

“Our forward order book has been maintained at £1.5 billion, with a further £1.7 billion in potential contract extensions, and our bidding pipeline stands at c£4billion.

“Whilst mindful of the challenging market, we look forward to further progress in the second half and remain on course to meet our revised expectations for the full year”.