Tilbury knocks Mowlem off top

A marginal improvement in new construction orders in May was not enough to arrest the decline in the rolling three-month total.

The CJ40 League, which records the competitive position of contractors gaining UK construction contracts over œ500,000, saw the latest month's total recover from April's two-year low.

The total of œ770 million was still a fifth below the monthly level a year earlier. The rolling three-monthly total slipped a couple of hundred million but it was still a little above the same three months a year earlier.

Any surprises in the latest CJ40 monthly table were in the swings in contractors' competitive positions rather than the overall volume of new work.

Mowlem was ousted from pole position by Tilbury Douglas, while Ballast Nedam was catapulted from nowhere into the top 10.

Tilbury Douglas topped the May table with œ60m, reaching the top three for the first time since last June. More than half Tilbury's gains last month were accounted for by its œ32m Limebank office contract in Northampton.

A dozen other contracts which Tilbury took into its order book during the month included an œ11m distribution warehouse at Milton Keynes for Polygram.

Trafalgar House made it into the number two slot with œ56m thanks to an 11,000t oil production platform for the Britannia Field, to be constructed at its Teesside facility, which will bring in œ50m.

Third-placed Amec secured a respectable œ52m, also thanks largely to a clutch of major deals with the offshore and process industries.

The MoD continues its spending spree with Wimpey and Balfour Beatty winning the latest biggest new contracts.

One of May's biggest office contracts, the œ20m refurb of Villiers House in London's Strand, helped Ballast Nedam to clinch ninth place.

Wiltshier achieved 11th place with œ24m thanks largely to a œ10m Clerical and Medical contract for a new office building in Surrey.

Taylor Woodrow won the A470 Merthyr Tydfil bypass at around œ11m. Haymills' subsidiary R S Kennedy scooped the Telecentral cable network worth œ18m.

Contract of the month for Sir Robert McAlpine was its œ16m share in a Cleveland incinerator project for Northumbrian Environmental Management won in jv with Voland Energy Systems.