The Enquirer understands that Balfour is in the box-seat for the job ahead of an official contract award shortly.

The project is one of four major highways schemes brought forward by the Government and given a faster delivery programme.

Work is expected to start before April and be completed by spring 2015 rather than during 2016.

This project is located on 13.4 miles of the M3 between Junction 12 of the M25 running to the A327 in Surrey.

A full environmental assessment is due to be completed shortly. The works currently ongoing are ground investigations to inform the detailed design of the proposed smart motorway scheme.

The fast-tracking will see motorway widening contractors shift towards round-the-clock working with more workers on multiple parts of a project at once.

More planning, design and construction preparation activities will be run concurrently to cut time.

And the Highways Agency is also encouraging contractors to take more work off-site for prefabrication where possible.

Three motorway widening schemes and a key dualling project to the port of Immingham are to be used to pilot the delivery of road projects in half the time.

Earlier starts and completion dates will drag an extra £75m of road investment into the current spending programme for hard pressed highways contractors.

A Highways Agency spokesperson said: “Balfour Beatty is one of four contractors on a smart (managed) motorway framework, where work can be allocated on smart motorway schemes as needed.

“Balfour Beatty has been awarded development work for the M3 scheme – to work on the detailed design, costs, etc.

“As soon as any decision is made and we are in a position to formally award the M3 smart motorway contract and confirm who the contractor is, we will announce this publicly.”