CJ50 Market data: Office wins put Sir Robert on top

PDF of market data February 2006

February saw Sir Robert McAlpine maintain its lead at the top of the table with a huge commercial workload, beating January’s haul by more than £150m with a forward orderbook of £430.7m. This was achieved through just five contracts, and pushed it from 11th place to sixth in the 12-month chart, and to first place from third in the commercial sector table.

Its largest contract was a £244m job for Bristol Alliance – the partnership between Land Securities and Hammerson responsible for the £500m redevelopment of Bristol’s central shopping area.

Sir Robert will be responsible for construction of the main retail, leisure and residential elements of the Merchants’ Quarter development, including the main four-storey House of Fraser store. There will be a total of 92,900m2 of retail and leisure space, and the project is due to complete in 2008.

Sir Robert was also awarded a £154m contract to redevelop and extend Leicester’s Shires Shopping Centre. The client is a partnership between Hammerson and Hermes. The project will create 30,000m2 of extra space, adding a cinema and 120 homes. The job is scheduled to complete in 2008.

Balfour Beatty achieved second place with more than £400m of work spread across all five sectors, following a relatively quiet January in fifth place. The contractor’s biggest success was in civils, with workloads of £90m-plus in the housing and public sectors. Of its 120 contracts won, £90m-worth of work was for the Highways Agency.

Bovis Lend Lease was one of 12 new entrants in February’s table, taking third place. It’s largest contract was Lancashire County Council’s £250m Building Schools for the Future scheme, won by Catalyst Lend Lease. Work on the new facilities will begin in autumn this year with the schools due to open in September 2008. The next phase of building will start in autumn 2007, and the final phase in 2008.

Bovis also secured an £85m offices contract in Manchester for Allied London Properties.

Laing O’Rourke remained steady in fourth place with four contracts totalling £141m, largely in the public and commercial
sectors.

Rok’s £123.7m of work helped it climb from 13th position to fifth thanks to a glut of housing work. This included £30m for Halifax-based Pennine Housing 2000 in Rossendale, Lancashire – part of a four-year framework deal. The work includes: new build, internal and external repairs and improvements; extensions; estate remodelling; and infrastructure projects. The firm also secured £21m for the Anchor Trust in Glasgow and £20m for Gateway Housing in Preston.

Morgan Sindall rose two places to take sixth, with £116m of work, the majority in civils. This included a £60m cabling contract in Croydon for National Grid.

Shepherd Construction fell one place to seventh, securing nearly £90m of work in the public sector. As part of consortium Healthcare Solutions with ABN AMRO, the contractor will undertake a £44.6m PFI scheme to build a new oncology facility at Castle Hill Hospital, Cottingham, for Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.

A second PFI deal followed a week later for Shepherd and ABN AMRO, this time in the form of consortium Axion Education, which reached financial close on £44.9m of schools work for Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council.

ISG InteriorExterior was a new entrant in eighth position. It secured two substantial London office contracts, one with Morgan Stanley worth £56m, and a £22m project for Norton Rose.

Wates rose one place to ninth with 31 contracts, mostly in the civils and public sector. Bowmer & Kirkland rounds off the top 10 with more than £75m of work in the commercial sector, including a £20m contract for the United Learning Trust in Sheffield.

Other significant contracts included a £22m housing contract with Genesis Housing Group in Stevenage for Durkan, a new entrant in 12th position. Edmund Nuttall, in 14th place up from 26th in January, won £14.8m of plant work from the Amec Group.

Other new entrants included Higgins in 19th place, John Laing Partnership in 23rd and Eric Wright in 26th.