What are the top 5 construction companies?

The top five construction companies in the UK are infrastructure contractors, names like Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall and Kier, with turnover in the billions from roads, railways, hospitals and office towers. None of them will ever price your extension. Their clients are governments and developers, their contracts run to hundreds of pages, and their smallest project is bigger than a whole street of house renovations.

Construction is a pyramid. The giants sit at the top on public and commercial contracts. Below them, regional contractors build schools, care homes and blocks of flats. Below that sit firms like ours: local builders doing renovations, extensions, lofts and bathrooms for homeowners. Each layer carries different overheads and margins, which is why a big contractor's rates tell you nothing about what your side return in Balham should cost.

For domestic work in London, the firms you actually hire are small, and often the director prices the job, runs the job and answers the phone. That is how we operate, and the structure is the point: on a kitchen extension (ours start from £2,500 per square metre, surveyed first, with a fixed written quote) the person who priced it is the person accountable for the finish. So when a top five construction list turns up in the news, read it as industry weather. Your shortlist should be local firms with recent work you can go and see on houses like yours.