A CONSTRUCTION firm has secured more than £13m of new North-East contracts in the last three months, including a major Tees Valley college project.

It emerged last week that Miller Construction, which has its North-East base in Washington, Wearside, had won a contract with Middlesbrough College to build its new £6.8m sixth form college.

Other wins include the contract for a £3.2m maintenance headquarters on behalf of Network Rail, and a £3.2m food outlet project at the MetroCentre Retail Park, both in Gateshead.

The firm's chief executive Chris Webster said: "These contract wins for our North region secure a positive workload going forward into 2012. "These projects cover three of our key target markets, education, retail and rail.

"We identified rail as a market which we wanted to enter and our commitment to seeing our aims achieved has led to securing our first contract in this sector as part of our new strategy."

Works on Network Rail's North East Maintenance Headquarters will begin in February.

The contract at the MetroCentre, to be known as MetrOasis will see a former petrol filling station site being developed into four individual food outlets, Starbucks; Krispy Kreme; Harvester and a Toby Carvery, with works due for completion in August.

Middlesbrough Sixth Form College is due for completion in September.