Data center work propels Skanksa to the top of the league

Skanska topped October’s contractor league table with a single contract win – a £158m data center fit-out job.

The company will install a power plant, air conditioning, ventilation, lifts and a roof gantry at Telehouse South in London’s Docklands for data center provider Telehouse. Skanska previously carried out a package of first works on the building.

This is Skanska’s first monthly top spot since April 2021, when it won a £507m job to upgrade the A428 between Milton Keynes and Cambridge. The company was not in the top 50 contractors in September.

Last month’s first Multiplex dropped out of the top 50, while two major contract wins took Balfour Beatty into second place. The firm won a £67.9m job to build a new mixed-use development in Edinburgh, called the New Liberton Community Campus. It also received £43 million to improve the Piccadilly line of the London Underground.

Balfour Beatty’s excellent month also pushed it to the top of the annual league table, replacing Morgan Sindall, who slipped to second place. Balfour Beatty has won 53 contracts worth £2.2 billion since November 2022.

Two contracts worth £130 million were signed in October. One went to third-placed Bowmer & Kirkland, which was selected to build three student accommodation towers containing 1,200 rooms in Manchester.

McLaren secured the other £130 million contract. The company will refurbish Thirty High, a 1960s tower block in London’s Victoria, a project worth a total of £400m.

Bowmer & Kirkland also won a contract worth around £5.3m to fit out 100 Bristol Business Park for Babcock.

Morgan Sindall secured many lower value contracts in October, winning 31 jobs for a combined total of £103m. The crap of getting a job didn’t stop him from dropping four places in the monthly league table to seventh.

Farrans won the biggest civil contract this month – it was chosen to deliver the first phase of the regeneration of Leeds Bradford Airport by building a terminal extension. The civil engineering major entered the chart in eighth place.

Kier, which slipped down the annual leagues last month after dominating the chart for almost a year, bounced back in October. The construction giant moved from sixth to third place, although it was ninth in the monthly league.