Cost & decisions
Landlord repair obligations, and the tenant's repair bill
A landlord may have to pay a tenant back for an urgent repair, and the Rental Housing Tribunal's ruling carries the force of a court judgment.
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All resources
Cost & decisions
What things cost, what drives the number, and how the decision gets made. Pricing, retention, payment, and the gap between award price and outturn cost.
Every number in a South African construction price has a source, and most of them move: the fuel price, the steel safeguard duty, the carbon tax, the municipal tariff, the prime rate on the retention still held. These pieces trace each one back to the gazette or the release it came from, convert it to rands at a stated rate, and say what it does to a rate sheet.
Cost & decisions
As-built drawings and handover, what you are owed
Britain has been consulting on a minimum handover pack. JBCC already obliges your contractor to hand one over, but leaves what is in it to your contract data.
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Cost & decisions
Water infrastructure projects, read for the supplier
Steel main from DN600 to DN1600, centrifuge decanters, a 1 250kVA generator and a SCADA system are all named in R35 billion of planned water work.
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Cost & decisions
Commercial property investment pack, and what net hides
Broll's Wynberg lot shows R2,14m gross, R1,03m recoveries and R2,06m net. Those numbers fit two very different investments, and the listing does not say which.
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Cost & decisions
Standby generator tenders in South Africa, and the spec
Our catalogue holds 36 public generator lines this week. Who is buying, and the four different points at which a model gets written into the spec.
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Cost & decisions
SANRAL routine road maintenance tender, nine provinces open
SANRAL has at least 40 routine road maintenance contractor lots open in nine provinces, and eleven compulsory briefings fall between 12 and 19 October.
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Cost & decisions
Penalties vs liquidated damages in construction (JBCC)
A late contractor owes the daily penalty written into the contract, and nothing if the Contract Data was left blank. Here is where the penalty stops.
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Cost & decisions
Tshwane alternative water source RFI, and what to send
Tshwane's RFI on alternative potable water sources closes on 30 October, and the City will use the answers to write the tender specification.
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Cost & decisions
NEC vs JBCC in South Africa: who can instruct you?
Under the JBCC the principal agent instructs, under the NEC the project manager does, and an instruction from anyone else is a risk you price yourself.
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Cost & decisions
Client matching for contractors, from closed tenders
A tender that closed with no award posted is a buyer who needed the work done. Five on Gauteng ground from late September 2026, and the call to make.
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Cost & decisions
What to check before hiring a contractor
Britain's new trusted trader scheme is voluntary. South Africa already has five registers, and a deposit rule that only bites once the money has gone.
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Cost & decisions
How to join a contractor panel in South Africa
Six public buyers had built-environment panels open on 29 September 2026, and a panel place is applied for like a tender but paid for like a promise.
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Cost & decisions
Subcontractor matching, and the mall that used 17 SMMEs
iTonka Square in Springs was rebuilt in eight months by a trade list anyone could read. By opening day, every one of those packages was long gone.
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Cost & decisions
Contractor matching service when the tender comes back empty
Public buyers re-advertise the same refurbishment and the same maintenance contract. The board shows why a second advert rarely fixes the first.
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Cost & decisions
Find vetted contractors in Johannesburg, trade by trade
Start with the trade, because the shortage is uneven. Here is what our network could put on a Johannesburg site on 21 September 2026, and where it could not.
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Cost & decisions
How to get paid on a South African construction contract
Five clauses decide it: deposit, certificate, retention, escalation and remedy. Each has a date, and the money moves on those dates or not at all.
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Cost & decisions
Buildings grew, construction works shrank
South Africa's economy contracted in the second quarter while construction grew, and the gap between buildings and works tells you which jobs to chase.
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Cost & decisions
Steel safeguard duty and what it does to your rate
ITAC added South Korean hot-rolled steel to the safeguard on 4 September 2026 at 11 percent, and the origin of your fabricator's coil now sets part of the rate.
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Cost & decisions
What your spec is worth in a municipal tender
Municipal distributors sell 44% of South Africa's electricity, and a correctly specified protection device only survives their tender if the document says so.
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Cost & decisions
How long can retention be held in South Africa?
Retention runs on your contract's clock, not on a statutory one, and on a R3 million job the 5% still held at month nine is R150 000 of yours.
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Cost & decisions
Fuel escalation on a contract you priced in June
Diesel rose R2,94 a litre on 2 September, and whether you recover any of it was decided by a clause you signed three months ago.
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Cost & decisions
Municipal tariffs rose 8,1% and 10,2% in July 2026
Headline inflation fell to 4,3% while the services a building actually buys went up by twice that, which is why the maintenance budget broke.
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The Arabella Brief
What changed this week, and what it costs you on Monday.
One email on a Friday, covering the week from Friday to Thursday so the week is closed when it is written. What actually changed, everything with a date on it, one development run through what it means for a contractor with forty people, and what we got wrong. A thin week is a short issue.