Mace towers above rivals in March leagues

Mace has steamed ahead of its competitors to take the top spot in Construction News’ latest monthly league tables.

The tier one firm signed contracts worth £691.5m in March, more than twice the value of its closest rival.

This was mainly due to a £600m job to redevelop central London’s Euston Tower (pictured) for British Land. Mace will substantially demolish the West End landmark and rebuild it as an all-electric life sciences hub.

The heavily refurbished tower, designed by Danish architecture practice 3XN GXN, will stand at the same height as its predecessor, but will offer nearly 25,000 square metres of additional floorspace. It will offer restaurant and cafe space, revamped public realm, and 740 square metres of facilities set aside for local entrepreneurs.

Mace cemented its win with two other contracts worth a combined £91.5m. The firm has not been out of the top spot in the monthly table for long, having last held the position in November.

Major energy infrastructure projects were responsible for two of March’s top five. Swiss firm Kanadevia Inova took the silver medal after winning a £300m job to build the Medworth Energy from Waste scheme in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.

Once built, the plant will be able to treat up 625,600 tonnes of non-recyclable waste each year, the firm said.

Costain finished fourth after it was appointed as programme delivery partner by uranium enrichment firm Urenco on upgrades to its Capenhurst facility in Cheshire. Among the £196m suite of improvements, the contractor will build Europe’s first high-assay low-enriched uranium advanced fuels facility, which will make fuel for small modular reactors.

February’s gold medallist Kier signed the most contracts in March, winning 17 projects worth £280.1m collectively.

Its string of deals – which took the contractor to third place in this month’s tables – included a £117.7m job at Rock Barracks in Suffolk for the Ministry of Defence.

Under the five-year contract, Kier will build living accommodation, technical facilities and other infrastructure, enabling three military units to live and work together on the same site.

Construction is due to start on site in late 2027 and complete in spring 2030.

Derbyshire-based Bowmer & Kirkland sat in fifth place after sweeping up high-value projects in the North of England.

The largest – a £118.5m residential development in Kirkstall Road, Leeds – is the firm’s second major project in the city for developer Glenbrook Property, with the 500-home Whitehall Riverside build-to-rent scheme currently on site.

Bowmer & Kirkland was also appointed through a Department for Education framework to build an education campus worth £52m in Northumberland.

Galliford Try dropped down two places from the previous month, sitting just outside the top five with nine projects worth £162.1m.

The rest of the top 10 had a European flavour, with the UK subsidiaries of French firm Legendre and Germany-based Goldbeck winning two high-value contracts each, to sit in ninth and tenth place respectively.

The rolling annual contractor table had a big shake-up in March. Last month’s top dog Morgan Sindall dropped down to third place after more than a year in pole position. Kier surged ahead to take first place after winning £3.11bn worth of contracts in the past year – £300m more than its closest rival Royal Bam.

Morgan Sindall still boasts the most contract wins out of any firm in the past year, having signed 268 deals worth nearly £2.27bn since last April.

The firm signed twice as many contracts as its nearest rival Galliford Try, which rounded out the top 10 with 133 wins worth £1.51bn. At the other extreme, Ferrovial made fifth place with only four project wins, all for civils projects.

Mace was a new entrant this month, appearing in fourth place after last month’s ninth-placed Balfour Beatty dropped out out of the top 10.

Winvic, Laing O’Rourke, Multiplex and John Sisk also had a successful 12 months, with each appearing in the rolling annual table after racking up more than £1.5bn in work.