Civil engineering group Balfour Beatty is celebrating the award of six contracts worth a total of £267m.

The deals were secured by BBCI - the company's US subsidiary - following increases in federal and state spending on transport infrastructure.

The largest of the contracts is a £62.9m-scheme to widen five miles of Route 405 in Culver City, in the greater Los Angeles area.

The project, which involves working on 26 bridges and the placing of 70,000 cubic metres of retaining wall, concrete and pavement, should take 37 months.

In Washington State, BBCI has won a £46.2m contract for the refurbishment and extension of the downtown Seattle bus terminal, while in Texas, a £46.7m roads project has been secured.

Further contracts have also been sealed in Maryland and in California, where BBCI will widen eight miles of Route 15 between Escondido and Rancho Bernardo.

The work, which takes BBCI's forward order book to more than £695.4m, comes two months after Balfour posted a 33 per cent rise in underlying interim pre-tax profits to £68m.

Chief executive Mike Welton said BBCI was now established as a major developer in areas such as Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio.

He said: "These new awards further extend our presence in US transportation markets, as federal and state expenditure on improving the US transport infrastructure increases."