That shares in WS Atkins have moved sideways over the past 12 months - enabling them to outperform the FTSE all share index by 12 per cent - is testimony to its defensiveness. Today’s full-year results from Britain’s biggest consulting engineer made much the same point.

Underlying revenues rose 11 per cent, earnings per share increased 18 per cent and the dividend was raised a better than expected 20 per cent. More important, the company says it has seen no reduction in activity in its markets - principally rail, highways and civil engineering - and predicts a further rise in operating margins after last year’s strong gains: up from 6.1 per cent to 6.6 per cent.

Atkins’s strength is its exposure to resilient public sector spending on infrastructure projects and a significant presence in the Middle East. At home, it is the provisional preferred bidder for the M25 widening scheme - the first tranche of which must be completed in time for the Olympics - and is also already a beneficiary of the 2012 games: some 300 staff are engaged in site remediation work. Overseas, Atkins’s work on the Dubai Metro should be supplemented by contract extensions, while it is also well placed to pick up work from the expansion of the Hong Kong metro. Further out, Atkins’s work on projects relating to climate change - whether flood defences in the UK or carbon-neutral architecture in the Middle East - is likely to come the fore.

Elsewhere, a line has been drawn under last year’s collapse of Metronet, in which Atkins was a shareholder, while a strong cash pile - some £164 million - offsets the burden of a net £150 million pension fund deficit. At £10.50, or 13 times forward earnings, Atkins sits at a premium to its peers but a deserved one. Hold.

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