Morgan Sindall tops 2023 contractor league table

Morgan Sindall has topped the Construction News annual contractor league table in 2023, after winning 330 jobs worth a combined £2.45bn.

The UK’s second-largest contractor beat second-placed Balfour Beatty, which hoovered up 56 contracts worth £2.1bn. Wates and Galliford Try came third and fourth on the list, after landing deals with a combined worth of £1.75bn and £1.66bn respectively.

Meanwhile Bouygues landed the most work in December, after winning a £1.34bn tunnelling contract for the Lower Thames Crossing with Murphy.

The French-owned builder reeled in £679.9m of work in December, with a £9.9m mixed-use contract topping up the £670m it is set to earn from constructing a 2.6 mile tunnel (pictured) under the River Thames as part of the planned crossing between Essex and Kent.

The mixed-use contract will see Bouygues deliver 76 flats and a medical centre in Didsbury, Greater Manchester, for Southwark Housing Trust.

Murphy came second in the monthly table for its own £670m share in the Thames Lower Crossing job, which will see the Bouygues Travaux Publics-Murphy joint venture (JV) deliver the longest tunnel in the UK and one of the widest in Europe.

The mammoth tunnelling job was originally tendered with a £2.3bn value. Client National Highways told Construction News the initial figure was a limit that included contingency for risk and the procurement process had enabled cost efficiencies to be found.

The winning JV was picked ahead of two others: a company formed of Bam Nuttall, Ferrovial Construction and Vinci Construction Grand Projets, and a JV between Dragados and Hochtief Infrastructure.

ISG came third in the December league table after wining three contracts worth a combined £217.6m – including the £200m phase two of the Slough One Data Campus, a contract let by data-centre developer Yondr.

Yondr and ISG are sister companies owned by Texan billionaire William Harrison through his private equity company Cathexis. Yondr chief executive Paul Cossell is also a past chief executive of ISG.

Morgan Sindall took the fourth spot in the monthly table, having been contracted to 15 projects worth a combined £161.5m, while Winvic came fifth, with two projects worth a combined £105.7m.

Aside from the Lower Thames Crossing and Slough data centra projects, the biggest deal of the month was signed by Winvic, for the £81m first phrase of Leeds build-to-rent scheme Sweet Street.

VolkerWessels, meanwhile, scored a £78m industrial scheme in Hemel Hempstead for global real estate firm Prologis, while Excalon signed up for a £78m carbon capture project at Peterlee in County Durham.

Bouygues has topped Construction News’ monthly contractor league table, which is compiled by construction intelligence provider Glenigan, three times in 2023. It also led in August and February following significant contract wins in the healthcare and student-accommodation sectors.

Wates also topped the monthly contractor league tables three times last year, after winning two major prison jobs in November and 14 contracts in both March and May, including residential jobs worth up to £100m.

The other league winners last year were Skanska, Multiplex, Bam, Galliford Try, Bowmer & Kirkland and Balfour Beatty.