Laing O'Rourke leads the way

A bumper haul of private commercial contracts gave Laing O'Rourke top spot in November's table - the contractor's first CJ50 win since Ray O'Rourke bought Laing Construction two and a half years' ago.
Laing O'Rourke's largest deal was with Thornfield Properties for a £100m commercial development in Feltham town centre, west London.
It also picked up contracts to build two other mixed-use developments, one with Rumford Investments in Liverpool worth £50m, the other with Furlong City in central London, valued at £45m.
Laing O'Rourke also scored the highest profile new deal of the month, winning the contract to build Coventry City Football Club's long-awaited new stadium. The deal had been re-advertised earlier this year after original winners Birse pulled out of the project, but Laing O'Rourke has now signed up with stadium company Arena 2001, and work will start on site in the new year. The stadium is part of a wider regeneration scheme for the north of Coventry.
Other wins for the contractor in November included a £12.9m student hall of residencescheme for Aston University in Birmingham, and a £22m hospital refurbishment job through Equion, as part of the NHS LIFT programme.
Second-placed Willmott Dixon had its best month of the year, helped by a great showing in the social housing sector, where it secured almost £150m-worth of new business. The contractor has now overtaken Taylor Woodrow in second spot in the social housing sector table.
Willmott Dixon has successfully pursued a policy of securing long-term partnering arrangements with housing associations and local authorities, and last month signed a 10-year maintenance and renewals deal with Colchester Borough Council worth £130m.
The contractor also picked up a £9m deal to build a new teaching facility for University College London.
Another firm recording its best month of 2003 in November was Costain, which finished third with more than £90m of new orders, while Morgan Sindall took fourth spot after turning in another steady month of social housing business; it remains the clear leader in the sector table.
Carillion came fifth, its two biggest deals an £11.3m commercial development for Birmingham Business Park, and an infrastructure project worth £13m for Integrated Accommodation Services, the jv in charge of the GCHQ redevelopment in Cheltenham, of which Carillion is a member along with British Telecom and Group 4 Falck.
Norwest Holst finished sixth after closing one of the first major deals under the NHS ProCure21 programme, a £55m redevelopment job for Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital Trust.
Kier took seventh spot after recording the highest number of new deals for the month, while eighth-placed Shepherd was another contractor to perform well in social housing, nosing into the top 10 of the sector table.
Interserve Projects finished ninth, with a spread of wins across most sectors, and Mansell, soon to be under the ownership of Balfour Beatty, claimed 10th, passing the £400m mark of new orders for the year.
Just outside the top 10, HBG Construction, positioned 11th, won a £10m deal to build a new store for Asda in Aintree, Liverpool, and a £22.9m contract to redevelop Matthew Boulton College in Birmingham.
Other notable deals outside the top 10 went to Balfour Beatty, a £9.5m job to build a new cardiac centre in Blackpool, and Caddick, a £9.48m contract for a new superstore for William Morrison Supermarkets in Knottingley, West Yorkshire.
Taylor Woodrow and Carillion recorded the only management contracts of the month.
In the sectors, the top positions look cut and dried in most tables with a month of the year left, but in the regions Kier has put in a late surge in the South West & Wales table to overtake long-time leader Rok by just a quarter of a million pounds worth of business.
Kier is also closing on Amec in the overall table, and needs just over £30m-worth of work in December to leapfrog into second spot. First place looks set to go to Balfour Beatty.¨