Morgan Sindall has returned to profit in the first half of 2016, with the company reporting a profit of £15.4 million before tax for the first six months of the year ad all divisions saw an upturn in performance.

At an operating level, the £25 million loss in the first half of last year has been transformed into a £17.5 million profit this year.

In the first half of last year, the company wrote off £40 million for historic losses on the Faslane naval base project in Scotland, which pushed it into a loss of £27.2 million before tax for the period.

However, this year the company is very much out of the red, although a further £700,000 exceptional charge was logged against a second old contract that transferred as part of the acquisition of the design and project services division of Amec in 2007, which drew a line under the affair.

On the whole, the firm’s Construction & Infrastructure division continued to recover, with a £3.2 million adjusted operating profit (£0.3 million in 2015) on revenue down 2% to £612 million, which gives an operating margin of 0.5%.

The company’s Chief Executive, John Morgan, commented that the group has delivered a strong growth in profit for the first half of the year, with a reduced average net debt and improved cash situation throughout the period.

Morgan added: “All divisions have contributed, demonstrating the strategic and operational progress made across the Group over the last few years.

“The EU referendum result has introduced some uncertainty into the markets in which we operate and it’s still too early to determine what the potential impact on the group will be in the medium and longer term.”

Meanwhile, the company is now looking for a new chairman after Adrian Martin announced that he intends to stand down by the end of this year.