Laing O’Rourke beats Balfour to top spot in annual league

February saw Laing O’Rourke leapfrog Balfour Beatty at the top of the rolling leader board for the past 12 months. Its 45 contracts netted it £3.34bn, including the huge £1.8bn win for Heathrow’s East Terminal last December.

Meanwhile, a £400m deal in Stoke-on-Trent meant Kier leaped six places to the top of the leader board for February. The deal was a 10-year repair and maintenance contract for the city’s 20,000 council homes, and to tackle it the contractor launched Kier Stoke, a joint venture between the contractor and the council.

Among Kier’s 34 other wins last month was a £50m office scheme in the centre of Reading, which will become the headquarters for internet directory company Yell, and a £11.6m deal for two primary schools in South Lanarkshire.

It was another strong month for Laing O’Rourke, which jumped from 16th spot to number two with five wins that included a £75m hospital in Middlesbrough and a £60m data centre for Barclays in Gloucester.

Apollo Group’s £28m deal for an early learning campus in Haringey, north London, helped propel it to number three.

Balfour Beatty’s 72 wins, including a £15.2m infrastructure deal for the Olympic Delivery Authority, elevated it one place to number four.

Fit-out specialist ISG clinched the number-five spot with 19 deals worth £132.4m and Bowmer & Kirkland shot up from 25th to 6th place with five wins that included a £25m Sainsbury’s in Penrith in Cumberland and a £23m contract for South Leicestershire College.

Bovis Lend Lease, last month’s number one, fell back to 25, with one contract win worth £11.5m, but that was better than HBG, which slipped out of the top 50 with no wins in In the construction and civils table, Morrison climbs from nowhere to number one with two deals worth £575m. They include a £450m deal with Scotia Gas Networks.