CJ Market data: Balfour’s back in the top spot

PDF of market data March 2006

Balfour Beatty returned to the number one spot in March’s CJ50 with a massive £528m-worth of forward orders, including a significant PFI haul in Birmingham. This puts it comfortably in the lead for the first time this year, with £225m more work than its nearest rival last month.

The company reached financial close on its £74m Birmingham Schools PFI project. The 30-year deal will provide a total of 12 new and refurbished schools, including two secondary schools, nine primary schools and one early years’ centre. Balfour Beatty is investing £4m of equity in the project through its specialist vehicle, Transform Schools, which is a partnership with Innisfree. The construction work on the project will be carried out by Balfour Beatty Construction and Balfour Kilpatrick.

At the same time, the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council affordable housing scheme, in which Mansell will carry out £57m of new build and refurbishment work in conjunction with Riverside Housing, also reached financial close. The scheme will see the refurbishment of 900 homes, the demolition of 140 redundant properties and the building of 120 new homes for sale.

Other work for Balfour included a £33m scheme in Blackpool for Modus Properties to extend the city’s Hounds Hill Shopping Centre. The contractor has also confirmed £25m of work through Tube infraco Metronet in London.

Kier made an impressive leap up the table from 13th position to second place with 77 contracts worth more than £300m, the majority of which were in the public sector. These were confidential at the time of going to press.

Morgan Sindall had a £241m haul, largely through its infrastructure division, which pushed it from sixth place to third. A Vinci Construction Grands Projets/Morgan Est joint venture won the design and build contract for Kincardine bridge over the Forth river estuary in Scotland. Work on the project, worth £90m to Morgan Sindall, begins in June and will last 29 months.

Morgan Est also won a four-year utilities contract worth £105m from E.ON UK. It  will service more than 12,950km2 of electrical distribution across central England. The project is due for completion in December 2009, and there will be the opportunity to extend the contract by a further five years.

Sir Robert McAlpine falls from February’s top spot to fourth place. Its biggest contract, at £55m, was won as part of the Pinnacle Schools consortium. The group reached financial close on the Gateshead Schools Project to design, build, finance and operate seven schools. Pinnacle will undertake the facilities management of the schools over a 25-year concession period.

Willmott Dixon grabbed fifth place, up from 41st in February. The company was awarded a £23.3m contract by Haringey Council in north London for a design and build school, which will be part-funded by BSF.

Costain returned to the table following an absence in February to take sixth place. Its £75m-worth of forward orders were spread over 11 contracts in the housing, infrastructure and commercial sectors.

Bowmer & Kirkland had a strong month in the commercial sector, securing £64m of work and moving up three places to seventh. Its biggest project was the £21m Sheffield Park Academy, which will replace the city’s existing Waltheof School.

Shooting up from 49th position to eighth was Fitzpatrick, largely thanks to a £36m project to build a distribution facility in Dagenham for Prologis Developments. This helped to boost it from 30th to 26th place in the 12 month chart.

In ninth, up from 17th, was Interserve, which has started work on the new £16m college which will form part of the £38m Macclesfield Learning Zone.This will also include a new joint sixth form college, a new school for Henbury High School, a new joint sports centre, the European Centre for Aerospace Training and the integration of Park Lane Special School.

Completing the top 10 was new entrant Dean & Dyball. Of 22 projects, the most significant was the £15m Quadrangle Building for Kingston University. The six storey, 9,000m² building will have a cast in situ concrete frame and post-tensioned concrete floors.