Balfour Beatty scores a hat trick

Balfour Beatty scored a third month at the top of the chart in August. Commercial work proved by far the most lucrative sector last month, with infrastructure and other public non-housing also buoyant. Helen McCormick reports.
August was another busy month for Balfour Beatty, which tops the CJ50 table for the third month in a row thanks to a whopping 90 contracts totalling more than 374m. While this is less lucrative than last month's 450m-worth of orders, it nevertheless puts Balfour well ahead of the rest of the field.
Balfour's workload includes 22.5m-worth of repairs work for Northumbria Water; 16.4m of work on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, and 21.7m of schools work for Glasgow City Council.
Balfour also pipped rival HBG to build the latest office block proposed for the City of London. The 42m scheme at the western end of Holborn Viaduct on Charterhouse Street is the first London project for Birmingham-based developer Castlemore Securities.
Laing O'Rourke rose from 10th position in July to clinch second place in August, thanks to some major Highways Agency (HA) work. Its biggest win was the 85m A1 Morpeth-Felton upgrade in Northumberland. The other runners for the deal, which also features a river bridge, were Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Costain, Nuttall and Skanska.
O'Rourke also secured 22.8m-worth of HA work at Grange over Sands, Cumbria. Outside of roads, the company won a 45m contract from Ferrara Quay to work on a complex of flats, shops, offices and a restaurant in Swansea.
Bovis Lend Lease was a new entrant to the chart in third position. It secured a 77m deal to revamp the Pollock shopping centre in Glasgow. Retail Property Holdings is promoting the Pollock deal, which will comprise a 80,000m2 mall, and breaks down into 47,000m2 of retail space, and 14,400m2 for commercial use, warehousing and a health village.
Bovis also clinched a 59m offices deal for Morgan Stanley. In addition, the group landed a 204m management contract with British Land.
QED, a consortium headed up by Wates, held off rivals Kajima and HBG to win Slough Borough Council's 44m PFI schools scheme. This helped Wates shoot up the main CJ50 chart to fourth place, from 16th in July. The project involves three schools and community facilities, including a residential complex for autistic children.
Wates, the council and the schools were all involved in the design process. Work on site is due to start next February, with completion scheduled for 2007. The maintain and operate concession will run until 2034.
In sixth place was Costain, with just four projects, including a contract worth 53.4m for M25 improvements, and one for 22.3m at Kingsway Business Park in Rochdale.
By contrast, Kier, in fifth position, secured 52 smaller contracts. Morgan Sindall and Rok also had busy workloads, with 36 and 34 projects respectively.
Edmund Nuttall, in 13th place, was appointed by Takuma to undertake 33.5m-worth of civil engineering works on an energy-from-waste scheme commissioned by Lakeside Energy from Waste, the company set up by Grundon Waste Management to develop the project.
The scope of Nuttall's work will includes the construction of the building and its foundations and elements of the mechanical and electrical operations. The energy-to-waste plant will be in Colnbrook near Slough, Berkshire, and will recover energy from 400,000t of waste a year, producing approximately 33MW of electricity from 2008 onwards.
Other notable projects in August included a 22.5m Bowmer & Kirkland warehouse development on behalf of Dixons Group Stores, helping to push the company into ninth place from 14th in July. Just behind in 10th position is new entrant Shepherd, which won 46.9m-worth of work from Helical Retail for a shopping development in Nottingham.
HBG won a 28m job to de-velop student accommodation for the University of East London in the Docklands, which nets it 12th place in August's chart.
Bovis's busy August has pushed it up to third position from fourth in the 12-month rolling table, pushing Costain into fourth place. Balfour Beatty still has a huge margin at the top, ahead of Laing O'Rourke steady in second place.