Bowmer & Kirkland won a higher total value of work than any other contractor in April, largely due to a to a £100m build-to-rent (BTR) job in Leeds.
The contractor tops Construction News‘ monthly league table of contractor project wins, ahead of runners-up Lendlease and Balfour Beatty.
Bowmer & Kirkland won five jobs worth a combined £239m. It’s largest project, the 500-home BTR scheme in Yorkshire (pictured), will be known as Whitehall Riverside and is being built for developer Glenbrook, according to data provided by construction intelligence provider Glenigan.
The scheme is planning to obtain a BREEAM Excellent rating and is supported by funding from Legal & General. It will be operationally net zero by 2030. Glenbrook expects the homes to be complete by April 2026.
Bowmer & Kirkland’s gold medal is its first in more than 11 years – it was last in the top spot in August 2011.
| Top 10 contractors, April 2023 | |||
| Rank | Contractor | No | Total (£m) |
| 1 | Bowmer & Kirkland | 5 | 238.7 |
| 2 | Lendlease | 1 | 180.0 |
| 3 | Balfour Beatty | 7 | 170.9 |
| 4 | Morgan Sindall | 26 | 149.8 |
| 5 | Royal Bam | 6 | 137.5 |
| 6 | Hill Partnerships | 5 | 127.7 |
| 7 | McLaren | 3 | 96.4 |
| 8 | Wates | 6 | 88.7 |
| 9 | Winvic | 4 | 86.1 |
| 10 | Kier | 8 | 73.7 |
| League tables are subject to revision | |||
Lendlease also had a good month, coming second after failing to make it into the top 50 at all in March. Its success was due to a single job – a £180m project to develop a 13-storey office building in London, called 2 Aldermanbury Square.
The firm was named preferred bidder on the job in November, but only signed the contract in April, according to Glenigan. In total, Lendlease will develop 30,000 square metres of office space, which has already been pre-leased to international law firm Clifford Chance. Construction is set for completion in December 2025.
Balfour Beatty bounced into third place with seven contract wins covering £171m of work. Its biggest win was a contract with NHS Highland for the £160m project to design and construct a new hospital in Scotland’s Fort William and refurbish the existing Caithness General Hospital in Wick.
The job is the latest Balfour has snapped up with NHS Highland, after it scooped a £37m contract to deliver the Badenoch & Strathspey Community Hospital and Health Care Centre in Aviemore, and the Lochalsh and South West Ross Community Hospital on the Isle of Skye back in July 2019.
Hill made it into the top 10 with five jobs totalling £128m. Coming in at sixth place, this is its best performance since October 2021. The firm’s biggest contract-win in April was the £66.1m job to revamp Sawyer’s Close, a residential complex in Windsor, according to Glenigan. The project will see Hill develop 345 apartments across three blocks measuring between four and eight storeys each, along with 54 new houses and 22 maisonettes.
McLaren, meanwhile, took seventh spot off the back of three jobs worth £96.4m. The biggest of the three was a £53m job to build 188 new homes in Acton Town, London. The new flats will be spread across three buildings, including a senior living block and a 20-storey residential tower.
In the annual league tables, Kier has now been in the top spot for nine consecutive months, with 161 contracts totalling £2.4bn.
| Top 10 contractors, year to April 2023 | |||
| Rank | Contractor | No | Total (£m) |
| 1 | Kier | 161 | 2,396.6 |
| 2 | Mace | 27 | 2,173.3 |
| 3 | Morgan Sindall | 353 | 2,110.3 |
| 4 | Balfour Beatty | 49 | 2,000.8 |
| 5 | Wates | 126 | 1,932.7 |
| 6 | ISG | 64 | 1,558.1 |
| 7 | Willmott Dixon | 125 | 1,529.9 |
| 8 | Lendlease | 9 | 1,447.5 |
| 9 | Winvic | 35 | 1,291.7 |
| 10 | Galliford Try | 126 | 1,253.0 |
| League tables are subject to revision | |||
The other medal places saw some shuffling though, with Mace springing up two spots into second and Morgan Sindall following close behind in third place.
Galliford Try was the only new entry to the annual top 10, sneaking in at 10th after missing out on the league for three months in a row.