Military job puts Bovis on top in October

Bovis Construction clinched the top spot in the league tables for October, in its second gold medal performance of the year.

The £470m-turnover contractor – which was rebranded as Bovis after US private equity firm Atlas Holdings purchased Lendlease’s UK contracting business in March – signed on the dotted line twice in October, according to construction data provider Glenigan.

Its biggest job was a £237m contract to deliver new and refurbished accommodation, medical and catering facilities at Kendrew Barracks and to provide offices, storage and a band practice facility at Bulwell Army Reserve Centre (ARC).

Design work is under way, with Bovis scheduled to start construction in autumn 2026.

At Kendrew Barracks, the works will include single living accommodation for junior ranks and new regimental offices. Bulwell ARC will gain secure storage, unit offices and a purpose-built band facility.

According to Glenigan, the other job was relatively minor, leaving Bovis at a combined total of £237m.

Bovis also took the top spot in July.

The firm’s success in October came despite it not even making the top 10 in September.

It just about pipped its nearest rival – Morgan Sindall – by £300,000.

The UK’s second biggest contractor won 26 contracts worth £236.7m – inching up one spot from its September showing.

Its biggest job was a £47.4m project to revamp Pibwrlwyd Campus – part of Coleg Sir Gâr – in Carmarthen, Wales.

The project will include new training facilities for sectors including construction, catering and creative arts. It will replace the existing campus, which will be demolished.

The campus will house students aged between 14 and 19, as well as apprentices, higher education students and adult learners.

Sir Robert McAlpine, meanwhile, took third spot in the monthly league table, with two jobs worth £158.9m – the biggest being a £150m project to revamp an office site in Shaftesbury Avenue, London. The contractor is targeting BREEAM Excellent rating on the 250,000 square foot site for the joint venture of Dutch developer Edge and Mitsubishi Estate.

It hopes to retain 75 per cent of the existing structure to cut carbon.

MCS Group climbed into the top 10 for the first time this year, taking fifth spot with a single £80m contract to build more than 16,700 square metres of logistics space in Watford for Harleyford Capital, according to Glenigan. The project team received £25.5m of loan funding from QuadReal Property Group, and completion is expected in late 2026.

Costain returned to the monthly in seventh place, after it secured one contract in October – a £71.8m job to decommission the reactor buildings at the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station site in northern Wales.

The project is expected to take around four years to complete, and will involve reducing the height of two reactor buildings from 54 metres to 25 metres. Costain also scooped a contract to decommission 11 UK nuclear power station sites in June 2023.

Contractor Strabag took top spot on the rolling annual league table for the third month running, just missing out on £3bn worth of contracts.

In total, it scooped six jobs between November 2024 and October 2025 worth £2.97bn – creating a gap of more than £600m on Kier.

Kier also kept its spot in the annual leagues, taking the silver medal for the third time running.

Royal Bam jumped up a spot from fourth to third after it signed 40 contracts over the course of the last year worth £2.27bn.

Bowmer & Kirkland rose from eighth to sixth spot thanks to £1.46bn worth of work across 31 jobs.

Laing O’Rourke made it in to seventh spot, after a month where it did not make it into the top 10. In total, it signed on the dotted line nine times, with £2.27bn worth of work.

Graham also jumped two spots, from tenth to eighth place.

Wates and McLaren also made it into the top 10, at ninth and tenth respectively, after a month out of the table altogether.