Contractor Costain has beefed up its presence in northern Iraq as it looks to bid for a £1bn-a-year reconstruction programme in Kurdistan.
This comes as security fears in central Iraq have reached such a pitch that Amec has admitted it does not know how much work will complete this year on its three contracts.

Kurdistan is safer than the rest of Iraq, however, so Costain has increased its team from six to 25. Two of these are expatriates and the rest are Iraqis. They are working on three infrastructure masterplan contracts thought to be worth £15m.

More significantly, Costain is the only big contractor in Kurdistan, placing it in a strong position to obtain work. One informed source said that orders for reconstruction in the region would be at least £1bn each year.

Amec, which has won £890m in contracts from US group Fluor for work in Iraq, told the stock exchange last week that security problems made it difficult to predict how quickly the rest of the work would come through.

One informed source said that orders for reconstruction in the region would be at least £1bn each year

An Amec spokesperson said that the group had completed the first tranche of work ordered through the US Programme Management Office but could not be certain when it would receive the next orders.

In the southern city of Basra, consultant engineer Halcrow has completed at least 90% of work on all the 48 contracts it has with the British government.