Balfour Beatty wins more work in May than all awards in April

In a record month for work let Balfour Beatty sped away from the pack having picked up the widening contract for the M25 London orbital motorway.

But the lucrative work hid what would have otherwise been a miserable May.

• CJ50 table May
• Rolling 12-month table

Balfour Beatty's record haul of £2.8bn was driven by its £2.5bn share of the M25 PFI project. The firm is in a joint venture with Skanska (whose figures are not expected to be in until next month) to widen the motorway to a forth lane between junctions 16 and 23, as well as between 27 and 30, over the next 30 years.

The contract turns what would otherwise be a very quiet month into the highest total ever at £4.3bn. But take away the M25 deal and it would have been a miserable month even for infrastructure, which has held up the total for the last six months. The one ray of light is private housing, which registered its highest total this year at £368m.

In second with just 6% of Balfour Beatty’s total, Vinci won 31 contracts worth £179m. It won some civils and public sector work, but the majority was commercial contracts including the £78m extension of Heathrow terminal 4. The contract, which is part of a five year plan to rebuild, refurbish or redesign the whole of Heathrow airport, helped Vinci move up seven places to 17th in the rolling 12 month total.

Morgan Sindall sped up to third having been given the go-ahead to start its part of the £209m upgrading of the A1 from two to three lanes between Dishforth and Leeming. The firm was awarded the early contractor involvement contract as part of a joint venture with Carillion in 2004, but only now has the work been given the green light.

Moving up 29 places to fourth, Interserve won £144m worth of work almost all of which was in the public sector. It’s most significant win was the contract to build a new £109m prison in Woolwich, London. The 480 place training prison will be built on unused land on the current Belmarsh prison campus.

Meanwhile, Rok’s £73m worth of work as part of its Circle Anglia housing framework moved it up to fifth in the monthly table and seventh in the rolling 12-month total, while Wates stole a place to seventh having been asked to build the £52m Coltishall Prison.