Administrator PwC is understood to be planning to novate these ongoing construction contracts on a piecemeal basis as quickly as possible.

As  many as 50 contractors are rumoured to have shown an interest in buying part or all of the Rok group.

It now looks like the stricken contractor’s social housing arm will be sold off in one deal, while many upcoming multi-contractor framework jobs will simply be passed to other firms on the list.

But Rok signed several big deals in the weeks before the collapse, which are likely to be rebid.

These include a contract with Axa subsidiary Inter Partner Assistance to provide home emergency services to customers, said to be worth a £40m, and a similar deal to handle all repair and maintenance claims for Tesco’s home insurance business.

On the traditional building side, Highlands and Islands Enterprise will need to find a builder to replace Rok, which had just signed a £31m sole contractor building framework for four years.

Rok had also just started building a £11m student block in Middlesbrough, and was on a big upgrade to the British Airways Engineering facilities at Heathrow, as part of its portfolio of airport jobs.

Another big prize for circling contractors is the £130m Oldham PFI deal to build 320 properties on the Crossley and Primrose Bank estates as part of the Inspiral consortium, comprising John Laing subsidiary Regenter, Manchester Methodist Housing Association.

Much of the regional offices’ building work in progress is made up of rafts of small building jobs, although there are still several larger contracts to tempt regional building firms.