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Run your finger down the list of the top 30 contractors in May and see if you can spot any absentees. Well, Galliford Try scrapes in at number 30 but where are BAM, Bovis Lend Lease, Skanska, Miller or Sir Robert McAlpine?

The latter topped the table this time last year after clinching the Olympic stadium job, but the big boys have clearly been suffering recessionary pains since then. Carillion picked up only a single £13m contract and Costain was in the bottom half despite racking up some decent wins lately.

Balfour Beatty topped the table with wins that included a £200m ºÚ¶´ÉçÇø Schools for the Future deal for Southwark council in south London.

Its lead was even more commanding in the table that includes civils, thanks to the huge £2.5bn deal to widen the M25. It also helped the £9.5bn-turnover company cement its place at the top of the rolling annual leader board; in the past 12 months it has won £3.8bn more work than closest rival Laing O’Rourke.

Infrastructure deals came to the assistance of many other firms in May and the overall haul of jobs, including civils, was £4.2bn, a rise of 45% on the £2.3bn recorded in May 2008.

The big schemes included Morgan Sindall’s £104m contract for the Highways Agency in North Yorkshire and two deals worth a combined £60m for Volker Highways.

Remove roads, bridges and rail from the equation and things look less rosy. The overall haul excluding civils was £1.36bn, which was 37% down on 2008.

Vinci finished in second spot with wins that included a £78m extension of Terminal 4 at Heathrow. The top five was completed by Interserve, which picked up a £109m prison job at the Belmarsh East site in London, Rok, which won a £73m deal for the Circle Anglia housing association, and Morgan Sindall.

Wates, which finished in sixth spot, won a £51.6m deal for Coltishall prison in Norfolk.