The contractor ended the year with a tally of £2.298bn of secured orders, just £22m more than main rival Kier in one the closest finishes for many years.
Multiplex finished the year ranked third after being boosted by a £500m order in December to rebuild the former London Television Centre on the south bank of the Thames in London.
Balfour also put in a late order for high voltage underground cables on the Eastern Green Link power connector scheme lifting it to fourth place.
Click for full interactive tables of contractor and client rankings
The top 100 firms together bagged over £38.6bn of work – up 13% on last year.
The top 10 firms saw their share of total new orders secured by the 100 leading contractors edged up to 39% from 38% in the prior year, according to data collected by information specialist Barbour ABI.
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