Balfour Beatty, Britain's largest construction company, has begun consulting with UK construction staff and expects jobs to go if new cost saving proposals get the go-ahead.
Balfour Beatty, which developed London's Olympic Aquatics Centre and employs 12,000 staff in Britain, is targeting 50 million pounds ($79 million) in annual savings in back office functions and other territories across the group by 2015.
"Balfour Beatty Construction Services has commenced a consultation period with its employees to seek employee feedback on proposals for change," it said on Thursday.
"At this point in the process, no jobs have been put at risk. We do anticipate that there may be some future job losses if, following dialogue with all of our employees, the decision is made to proceed with the proposals for change.
"We do not envisage these job losses will affect operational employees involved in project delivery."
Balfour, which employs 50,000 people in total and operates in some 80 countries, delivered 15 million pounds of savings from a cost cutting plan last year. Shares in the group were down 2.9 percent to 288.9 pence at 1148 GMT.
Earlier this month, the FTSE 100 firm posted a 9 percent rise in 2011 pretax profit to 334 million pounds, boosted by its consultancy, support services and infrastructure businesses.
The threat of redundancies come amid a savage downturn in the construction industry that has seen builders' wages drop dramatically since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007.
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