City retail win propels Skanska to top in April

Skanska’s £150m deal with developer Minerva to build the 560,000ft2 St Botolph’s office and retail scheme in the City of London propelled it to the top of the leader board last month.

Its £88m Two Kingdom Street office scheme at the PaddingtonCentral development in London also helped take its haul for April to £279m and move it up from number nine the previous month.

Willmott Dixon jumped even further, up from 16 to number two. The largest chunk of the £256m it won came from a £104m repair and maintenance deal won by its Inspace social housing arm for Birmingham council.

Elsewhere HBG dropped from the top spot to number three despite picking up a £90m redevelopment contract from the Grimsby Institute of Further Education.

Morgan Sindall moved up from five to four and Balfour Beatty followed it, edging up one spot to number five. If civil engineering is included in the figures, Balfour finished April in second place thanks to a £111m deal with Glasgow council to build an 8km extension to the M74 motorway.

Kier moved up two spots to number six in the same league after bagging a £26m mixed-use project for Sutton Harbour Holdings in Plymouth and a £16m hotel deal for Butlins in Bognor Regis, West Sussex.

Meanwhile, Bowmer & Kirkland shot up the table from 20th to 7th spot after wins that included a £59m city-centre campus job for Nottingham Trent university.

Social housing contractor Higgins Group was another spectacular performer, climbing from nowhere to number 11 in both monthly tables.

Laing O’Rourke, Interserve and Wates made up the rest of the top 10, the latter winning a £30m education deal in London’s well-heeled Kensington & Chelsea borough.

Carillion, last month’s number two, dropped out of the top 30 after picking up only £6.5m worth of work.

The top 10 in the rolling annual table stayed the same although Willmott Dixon rose dramatically from 20 to 11 after it took its Inspace social housing business in house.