CJ50 Market data: Carillion battles for April win

PDF of market data April 2006

April saw a complete reshuffle in the top 50 and new entries in first and second position. The bulk of the month’s work was in the public sector, with the commercial and civils sectors also enjoying healthy forward orders.

Carillion stormed to the top spot after it and its partners in the Aspire defence consortium were awarded the huge Project Allenby/Connaught PPP contract by the Ministry of Defence.

The £1.2bn construction programme will be carried out by a 50:50 joint venture between Carillion and Kellogg Brown & Root for garrisons at Aldershot and across Salisbury Plain, and provide support services for these garrisons for the next 35 years. Carillion will invest £60m of equity in the project, which is expected to generate a total of approximately £9.5bn of revenue for Carillion.

Bovis Lend Lease was in second position. The bulk of its £300m haul was the £275m St David’s 2 shopping centre in Cardiff for Land Securities and Capital Shopping Centres. The firm was also awarded the £22m refurbishment of the former Dickins & Jones department store on London’s Regents Street for Shearer Property Group.

Dropping from first place to third was Balfour Beatty. Its biggest win was a five-year partnering contract with Hammersmith & Fulham Housing Management Services to improve the housing stock. The £35m contract will bring 2,000 dwellings up to the government’s Decent Homes standard.
Balfour also announced a £22.7m tranche of its Birmingham Schools PFI project. The 30-year scheme 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.

Rising to fourth place from 15th was Morrison with more than £223m of commercial work spread over seven contracts, while Morgan Sindall fell two places to fifth.

Laing O’Rourke was a new entrant in sixth place with a diverse portfolio of contracts, including the £33m museum project on Merseyside. The 10,000m2 Museum of Liverpool will be built at Mann Island and will come into its own in 2008 when Liverpool takes over as European City of Culture.  Other wins included: a £20m sports pitch for the London Borough of Hillingdon; a £25m deal to build a laboratory in Bristol for the National Blood Service; and a £28m residential and retail complex in Cardiff for developer Urban Solutions.

Up five places to seventh was Rok with 32 contracts. The contractor will share a home improvements framework for Bristol County Council with Wates (26th position). The framework will bring 29,500 houses up to Decent Homes standard, with work due to begin in July.
Kier fell six places to eighth with nearly £110m of work. Skanska had a strong month, rising from 24th position in March to take ninth.

Bowmer & Kirkland rounded out the top 10. The company is about to start work on an office development at Park Royal for London and Regional Properties. The £29.25m project will create a seven-storey office building with semi-underground car parking and will be completed in September 2007.

There were plenty of substantial projects in the rest of the top 50 in April. HBG, in 12th position, won a £28m project to demolish an existing building next to Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and construct a new gallery building linked to the existing Grade I listed structure.

Durkan, in 13th place, secured £68m of work in London for Genesis Housing Group. Just behind in 14th was Willmott Dixon, which will build the £20m Eltham Centre for the London Borough of Greenwich.

19th-placed Osborne is to design and build a £32.8m academic building for the London School of Economics, for completion by March 2008.