Mace has been crowned the industry’s top contracts league winner after a blockbuster year of deal-making that left rivals trailing in its wake.

The London-focused contractor emerged as 2025’s biggest work winner after banking £3.18bn of secured orders, powered by a hoard of projects including the £1.1bn British Library extension and a string of heavyweight office schemes in the Capital.

The haul came in the same year Mace offloaded its profitable consultancy arm to concentrate on contracting.

Austrian contractor Strabag’s UK business ran Mace close, finishing second after a transformative year anchored by the 110km Haweswater aqueduct upgrade for United Utilities, a programme valued at around £3bn in total.

Third place went to Sir Robert McAlpine on £2.26bn, with major wins including the new electric furnace steelworks at Port Talbot and the Therme Spa scheme at Trafford Park.

The 2025 league table also marked a changing of the guard, with McLaren, McLaughlin & Harvey and Graham all breaking into the top 10 as they stepped up to land bigger, more complex jobs.

Click for full interactive tables of contractor and client rankings

The top 100 firms together bagged over £47.3bn of work – up 22% on last year.

The big 10 firms saw their share of total new orders secured by the 100 leading contractors edge up to 42% from 39% in the prior year, according to data collected by information specialist Barbour ABI.