The independent Northampton building services contractor has set its sights on doubling the size of the business over the next three years after seeing an upsurge in work opportunities.

Its expansion push sees the firm kick-off 2014 with five new jobs, understood to be worth around £40m in total.

The biggest of these is the M&E package for main contractor ISG’s Liverpool exhibition centre and hotel job at King’s Dock, which is thought to be worth around £15m.

In Cambridge, Briggs & Forrester has scored a hat-trick of contracts.

Kier has let a £9m M&E package to the firm on its refit of Cambridge University’s famous 1970s Arup building, due to complete later next year.

The firm has just started working with contractor SDC at the TWI Granta Park on 260,000 sq ft of new research laboratories and ancillary space.

It has also just bagged a £6m M&E package for another research laboratory in the city for an unnamed client.

Closer to home, Briggs & Forrester has also taken the £1.7m building services fit-out for the University of Northampton’s Innovation Centre, also for Kier.

Last year Mike Stanton, chairman of Briggs & Forrester, said he planned to grow the firm into a national M&E contractor with a turnover of around £250m over the next few years.

He said that the business had seen the opportunity to fill the gap left in the market after several big names collapsed at the height of the M&E market crisis.