Kier has plenty to celebrate after busy festive period

Kier took first place in the December construction league table thanks to 37 contracts worth a total of almost £293m.

Most of the value of the contracts was derived from the housing sector, with £159m of wins. The commercial sector contributed £97m, and £35m were public sector contracts.

In second place was Bovis Lend Lease, which bagged a £250m Building Schools for the Future project in Lancashire. This was the largest single project of the month, more than three times the size of Miller Construction’s £80m shopping centre at Union Square in Aberdeen.

Laing O’Rourke secured third place with three schemes. The largest was a £50m contract with Nottingham Trent University. It also won contracts to build a £43m civic centre for West Lothian council and a £35m stadium for Cardiff City football club.

Ayrshire-based firm Barr made an appearance in fourth place with 11 projects worth £111m in total. This was a huge leap for the builder, increasing its annual total by almost one-third in a month. Miller’s Union Square win pushed it up to fifth place in the annual table.

It was a strong month for construction, with 275 contracts worth almost £1.7bn – a 49% increase on November’s £1.1bn total. The public sector market had a good month, with 39% or £662m of the total work. Commercial contracts worth £608m accounted for 36% of the total, housing contracts made up 20% (£335m) and industrial projects 5% (£77m).

Civils work did not change the order of the top five companies, but brought Carillion into the top 10, with £47m worth of civil contracts; Balfour Beatty’s £53m haul of civil contracts takes it to sixth place from 10th.

Although it had a comparatively quiet month, Balfour Beatty still heads the rolling annual table by some way. Carillion fell from second to seventh place after its contracts dropped from a £272m November total to £84m in December. Skanska moved back into second place and Kier took third.