Major road projects put Balfour Beatty top of contractors table

A brace of major road projects helped Balfour Beatty jump to top spot of the contractors table in December.

The contractor secured a £203m contract haul over the month, including a £96m job to build the Aberdeen A90 Western Peripheral Route and a £56m package of improvement works for junction 30 of the M25.

These wins helped Balfour climb eight places from its November league position.

However, it wasn’t enough for Balfour to top the contracts league for the year. Kier placed highest for value of contracts in 2014, with £2.2bn, above Balfour in second with £1.4bn.

Seven of the top 10 positions in December were filled by contractors that did not feature in the previous month’s table.

Highest ranked among these was Brookfield Multiplex, which claimed second place, in part thanks to a £150m job to build Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children.

Wates climbed three places to third, with a contract haul that included a £55m job in Norwich to develop a food and health research facility, a £55m student accommodation scheme for Cambridge University and a £16m contract to build a new high school in Milton Keynes.

The top five was rounded out by Mace in fourth and Kier in fifth, down four after topping the table in November.

Mace secured one of the month’s largest contracts, a £81m residential scheme for client Oxley Holdings in London’s Royal Wharf.

The remainder of the top 10 places were filled by contractors that did not feature in November’s table - Bam, Sir Robert McAlpine, Interserve, Henry Boot and John Sisk.

In December the CPA/Barbour ABI overall index for construction contract awards dipped 2% month-on-month to 138 - but the figure was 23% higher than December 2013.

You’ll find interactive, sortable league tables of contract wins here: building.co.uk/barometer