CJ50 Market data: Balfour passes 1,000-contract mark for 2006

PDF of market data August 2006

Balfour Beatty rose eight places in August to take the top spot in the CJ50 table, with an impressive 77-contract haul worth nearly £381m. Every contractor in the top six secured forward orders of more than £100m, with the commercial sector performing particularly strongly.

The bulk of Balfour’s work in August came from the public sector, particularly healthcare. Its largest win was the Victoria & Stobhill Hospitals project in Glasgow. Balfour Beatty Construction won the scheme through an alliance with specialist developer Canmore Partnership. The contractor will be responsible for the £180m contract to design and construct the new hospitals.

The facilities, which are scheduled for completion in Spring 2009, form Phase 1 of NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde’s hospital modernisation programme.

Meanwhile Mansell, the construction and property services business of the Balfour Beatty Group, has been awarded a £23m contract from Billericay, Brentwood and Wickford NHS Trust for the construction of the new Brentwood Community Hospital. It is due for completion in June 2008.

Morgan Sindall was up two places to second thanks to a healthy volume of civils work. The most significant was a seven-year, £210m engineering contract to upgrade gas networks across  northern England for United Utilities, which runs the gas mains system on behalf of Northern Gas Networks.

Infrastructure services company Morgan Est was awarded a £39m contract by Yorkshire Water to upgrade Esholt’s sewage treatment works in Bradford and parts of North Leeds. The existing plant is more than 100 years old, and the new works are due for completion in mid 2009.

Laing O’Rourke leapt seven positions to take third, again largely through civils work. Two Highways Agency contracts, in Morpeth and Liverpool, netted the contractor £123m.

It also won an £18m secondary school redevelopment deal in Nottingham. The Emmanuel School will be rebuilt as a two-and three-storey complex, providing around 11,000m2 of space and sports pitches.

Sir Robert McAlpine’s entire £217.9m haul was in the commercial sector, pushing it up from 10th to fourth place. By far the largest of its four projects was £160m of housing work for Arsenal subsidiary Highbury Holdings.

Its quirkiest was a £25m indoor Alpine village for Extreme Cool in Manchester. The scheme, called Chill Factor, will be built near the Trafford Centre.

Fifth-placed Galliford Try is performing well in the commercial market. It has begun a £28m urban regeneration project at Bermondsey Square in south-east London after its appointment by developer Urban Catalyst. The 14,000m3 mixed-use development will include 4,600m3 of residential space, office and retail accommodation, as well as a community cinema. Completion is due in summer 2007.

Bovis Lend Lease dropped a place to sixth, with the bulk of its work coming from the commercial sector. Projects included a £60m contract with Dominion Corporation Trustees to build offices in London, and a £50m Manchester retail development for Peel Holdings.

Kier’s 36 contracts brought it £90m of forward orders, including a £24m housing development for the National Offenders Management Service in Surrey. This pushed the contractor one place up the chart to take seventh.

Edmund Nuttall was a new entrant to the table in eighth position. It will undertake £84m of work for Cambridgeshire County Council, building the city’s new guided bus route. Passengers could be hopping aboard the futuristic network, the longest of its kind in the world, by the end of 2008.
Wates was ninth, with the bulk of its work spread across the housing and commercial sectors, to a total value of £86.51m. It’s most significant scheme agreed in August was £30m of housing work in Hartlepool for Easington District Council.

Rok was up a place to round off the top 10, also enjoying a busy month for housing work. It will undertake a £57m contract on Merseyside for Riverside Partnership.

Sisk was one of the nine new entrants to the CJ50 table, in 15th position, largely thanks to a £41.9m housing project in Middlesex for Quint Essential Homes.