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Sir Robert McAlpine defied the slowdown last month to take the top spot with £337m worth of work. What’s more, the bulk of it was in the commercial sector, including a £152m job for exhibition organiser ExCeL and a £116m project for Pace Investments, both in London.

The wins, together with projects for Westmark in Bristol and the Crown Estate Commissioners in London, sent McAlpine almost £150m clear of Kier, the second-place contractor. Kier stuck to its low-cost, high-quantity formula to pick up 38 jobs worth a total of £200m, £169m of which were in the public sector.

In total, the public sector was worth £770m to the industry, and Willmott Dixon, the third-placed contractor, performed well in this arena. Its contracts included two school deals in Kent worth £32.5m in total.

Fourth-placed BAM Construct was also a winner in the education market – it picked up college schemes worth £78m for Varndean College in Brighton and Sutton Coldfield College in the West Midlands.

Despite dire predictions for the future of commercial work, the sector was worth £778m, still the biggest source of employment. Wates, the fifth-placed contractor, picked up £52m of it, including a £26m office contract for developer Segro in Winnersh, Berkshire.

The good news for the sector was that the total amount of work won was £1.8bn, up from £1.4bn in September, but at 302, the number of contracts was down by 40 from September. Last month’s table-topper Carillion was one firm to suffer from the drop in jobs. It picked up just £24.7m worth of work across eight contracts.

Laing O’Rourke’s fortunes also darkened during October. It secured only £45m of work which pushed it down to 14th place from 6th last time around. However, this was enough to ensure that it retained its commanding lead at the top of the rolling annual league, with £4.2bn of work won since November 2007.