Morgan Sindall bucks the trend

In a brief pre-close trading update, the firm said it had grown its order book from 3.5 billion at the half-year stage to 3.6bn.

Morgan said it was making "good progress" in the integration of Connaught into Lovell, its social housing business.

Lovell bought about 80 per cent of Connaught's social housing contracts for 28 million back in September, following the collapse of the contractor.

Re-branding the Connaught business to Lovell is expected to be completed before Christmas.

While activity in the housing market remains subdued, Morgan highlighted the continued "reasonable pipeline" of work in the social housing sector.

The group revealed that it had recently won contracts relating to three regeneration schemes for Southampton City Council, valued at a total of 30m.

"Overall we are well positioned to meet the challenges and opportunities in 2011 and beyond," the firm said.

Morgan's presence in Scotland includes a construction office in Paisley and infrastructure bases at Larkhall and Livingston.

Projects carried out north of the Border include the 445m M74 motorway extension in Glasgow - which is worth about 111m to the group as part of a joint venture - and work on hospitals in Perth and Angus in a 95.4m deal with NHS Tayside.