Engineering firm Babcock said it foresaw a strong flow of upcoming work from the defence and security sector, despite cuts to MoD budgets.
The group, which directly employs around 1,700 people in Fife, is part of the consortium piecing together the 65,000-tonne HMS Queen Elizabeth supercarrier at its main Scottish base at Rosyth, ahead of a 2016 launch.
The firm foresees further opportunities in “transformation and investment” programmes, and revealed it was tracking further work from the UK’s changing armed forces.
It said discussions on the naval-base Maritime Support Delivery Framework were progressing well, while Warship Modernisation Initiative contracts have been extended until next March for work carried out on the Clyde and at Devonport.
Also amongst the workstreams the company is seeking to exploit is the MoD’s procurement-focused Logistics and Commodities Services Transformation contract, which it is working on alongside courier company DHL.
“We have been tracking this opportunity for around 18 months and expect the formal competitive process to run into 2015,” the company said.
“We continue to see other opportunities for defence and security moving closer to a formal competitive process.”
The news came as Babcock used a trading update for the year to the end of March to reveal what it called “strong progress” on the previous year.
It said market conditions had been “positive” across the business.
“In both our civil and military markets a number of significant transformation and investment programmes are being progressed,” it said.
“As a result, bidding activity remained high throughout the year and we continue to track significant new outsourcing opportunities.”
The group said its order book remained “stable” at approximately £12 billion, adding that it had won or been named as the preferred bidder on contracts worth an additional £1bn since November.
They included a £440 million deal for British Airways’ ground fleet and baggage-handling systems operations and maintenance, a £100m contract to design and supply weapon-handling and launch gear for an unnamed international customer, and engineering support and equipment procurement contracts for UK and international markets worth a total of around £50m.
Babcock is also bidding for more work, with the pipeline increasing in value from £14bn to £15.5bn over the last two months, and hailed the scale of its order book.
“The scale of our order book continues to provide excellent visibility of future revenue streams across the group,” the company said.