About Arabella · Capability should decide who builds.
A vetted contractor panel for South Africa’s built environment.
South Africa is full of contractors who can build the work and cannot reach it, clients who are commissioning and cannot find the right builder, and brands who cannot get near either. Everybody is one relationship away from the thing they need.
Nobody holds those relationships. Tender portals reward whoever watches them hardest. Procurement rewards whoever is already known. A contractor's best project rarely becomes their next one, because the only thing carrying it forward was a handshake between two people who have both since moved on.
Arabella exists to be the structure that holds them instead. One place where capability is verified once and stays current, where an introduction is made rather than a listing published, and where how a job actually went is the reason the next one is easier.
It is deliberately unglamorous work. It is also the difference between an industry where who you know decides who builds, and one where what you can build does.
Verification is the product.
Arabella Infrastructure Solutions is a Johannesburg-based vetted contractor panel that gives property managers, bodies corporate and estates one quote from one company, with every contractor checked against the registers before a job starts.
Before a contractor quotes
cidb registration, by number
Looked up on registers.cidb.org.za rather than read off a certificate, in the class of works the job needs. The removals notices are read against the whole panel, not one contractor at a time.
National Treasury restricted suppliers
The database and the Register of Tender Defaulters, and the directors behind the company, because a restriction follows the person to the next entity.
The trade registration the work needs
Department of Employment and Labour for electrical, PIRB for plumbing, SAQCC Gas for gas. The certificate at the end of every job is issued against one of these.
Insurance and COIDA
Public liability in force and a letter of good standing valid for the duration of the job, re-checked as it expires, not only on the day of award.
The last job
A contractor stays on the panel on the strength of how the previous job went: on time, signed off, certificate filed. That record is what a client is buying.
Before a piece publishes
Who writes Insights
The Arabella team: the people who run the panel, quote the jobs and read the gazette, with an editorial pass before anything publishes. Pieces are signed by the team rather than an individual because the checking is a process, not a person.
Read at the source
Every claim that can be checked is checked against the gazette, the register, the Act or the statistical release before a piece ships, and re-checked if it is older than three weeks when it publishes. A claim that cannot be checked is cut.
Corrections
Something wrong, out of date or missing: write to sales@arabellainfrastructure.com with the page. Corrections are made on the page and the updated date changes.
The registers in full, with what each one tells you: how to vet a contractor in South Africa.
Verified once, properly
Grading, capacity, financial standing and record, checked before an introduction is made and kept current afterwards. That check is what a client is actually taking when they take our word.
Introductions, not listings
A directory publishes a name and hopes. We put someone forward, and we are the ones who look foolish if it goes badly. That asymmetry is the whole product.
The relationship outlives the project
It sits with the structure rather than with whoever happened to make the call, so it survives people leaving, teams changing and companies growing.
What we learn stays learned
Every job adds to what the network knows about who delivers. Nothing else here compounds, and nothing else needed to.