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.

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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.