CJ50 Market data: Balfour breezes into summer top spot

PDF of market data June 2006

It was a particularly busy month for the public non-housing sector in June, with a big hospital win for Balfour Beatty helping to secure it the top spot for the first time since March.

Balfour’s PPP/PFI healthcare vehicle – Consort Healthcare – reached financial close for the contract to design, construct, finance, maintain and manage the new £553m Birmingham Acute and Adult Psychiatric Hospitals for the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and the Birm-ingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust.

The concession is for 35 years following completion of the five-year, two-month construction period, and will deliver the first new general hospital in Birmingham for 70 years. Balfour Beatty is contributing £23m of equity to the project.

The construction work, which has been underway for some time, is being carried out by a joint venture between Balfour Beatty Construction and Haden Young, the building services arm of the Balfour Beatty Group.

The mental health facilities will open in 2008 and the first phase of the main acute hospital will open in 2010. The remainder of the new-build acute facilities are scheduled to come on stream in 2011. Balfour Beatty’s partners for the scheme are Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC.

Second-placed Taylor Woodrow was a new entrant thanks to another large hospital job for the St Helens & Knowsley NHS Trust. The £367m design and build contract to overhaul St Helens, Whiston and Newton hospitals on Merseyside, is likely to take five years to complete.

Laing O’Rourke rose from seventh place to third with a mix of contracts across every sector, bar industrial, including the £90m scheme to widen the A453, east of the M1, an increasingly congested route between Nottingham, the M1 and Nottingham East Midlands Airport.

The company also secured a £60m mixed-use development in Norwich for Wilson Bowden Development, and a £20m contract to build a new sports centre for Swansea City Council.

Kier was down one place in fourth, its most notable project being a £20.2m contract for supermarket giant Wm Morrison in Manchester.

Interserve shot up 12 places to take fifth thanks to a busy month in the public sector, including the PPP contract for the Scottish Prison Service to construct and operate a new prison at Addiewell, West Lothian.

Rok was steady in sixth. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of its £71.8m haul was in housing, including £5m of work for Manchester Methodist Housing Association.

Morgan Sindall’s 39 contracts across all five sectors secured it seventh place in the CJ50 table, down two from its May position.

Bovis Lend Lease’s three substantial contracts were all London office buildings, two at £25m for Great Portland Estates and Allied London Properties, and an £18m scheme with Berkeley Square Holdings. The contractor was down four places to eighth.

HBG Construction, in ninth, won a £15m scheme with the National Assembly for Wales to build a new office on the site of the former Hotpoint factory in Llandudno Junction. If the first planning application is successful, construction should begin in the latter stages of this year.

Wates was stable in tenth, with more than £53m of work, nearly half of which – £24m – came from the University of Liverpool to extend the current library facilities.

Other substantial contracts included two office projects for Sir Robert McAlpine: a £22.4m scheme for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in Milton Keynes; and an £18.9m scheme in Edinburgh for Southside Capital. These boosted the contractor’s position from 28th to 12th.

Barr, North Midland and Midas all enjoyed significant movement up the chart, and there were nine new entrants.

The overall total was down on May’s £2.8bn haul, but well up on last June’s £1.6bn. The cumulative top 10 rankings remain unchanged since last month.