Balfour Beatty back on top with £600m deals in June

Balfour Beatty stormed to the top of last month’s contractors league tables after reaching financial close on its £553m Birmingham Hospital PFI scheme.

The scheme, for Birmingham NHS Trust, will be the first general hospital to be built in the city for 70 years. The go-ahead for the scheme brought the total value of Balfour Beatty’s building contract wins for June to £609.25m, the vast majority of these coming from the public sector.

Balfour Beatty’s success has also strengthened its position at the top of the annual rolling league. The company has retained its lead over second-placed Skanska, which dropped to 16th place in the monthly contractors table it topped in May. The positions of the top 10 in the annual league remained unchanged from last month.

Taylor Woodrow enjoyed a spectacular entry into the monthly table, coming second behind Balfour Beatty despite not making the top 30 for May. Taywood’s charge came off the back of just six public-sector contract wins, including financial close on its £173m St Helens and Knowsley PFI hospital project in Merseyside.

Laing O’Rourke was third in the monthly table, largely thanks to housing wins, which accounted for just under half of its £113.91m total. However, the contractor was still almost £500m behind Balfour Beatty and £290m behind Taylor Woodrow.

The June top three came in at the same positions when civils work for the month was included, but Laing O’Rourke closed the gap on the leaders. The company scored £90m from its civils work alone over the month, driving it up from seventh place in this table in May.

The public sector drove building work overall during June, awarding £1.3bn of contracts. The commercial sector was responsible for £431.8m, and work awarded by the housing sector dropped to £197.7m from £414m the previous month.