cidb grading levels run 1 to 9, and each one is a ceiling on what you may bid in South Africa. The ceilings are R500 000, R1 million, R3 million, R6 million, R10 million, R20 million, R60 million and R200 million, then no limit at grade 9. Those are the cidb's own figures. The part nobody tells you is that the grade is rarely what is keeping you off the work.
We watch the board every morning, and the same thing happens most weeks. A contractor asks how to get to grade 6, when the advert they actually wanted was a grade 3 job in a class they are not registered for. The ceiling was never the problem.
The second number, and it is the one that bites
Every grade carries two figures. Everyone quotes the first and almost nobody plans around the second.
The ceiling is what you may bid. The track record is what you must already have finished, in the last five years, before the cidb will give you the grade at all. On the cidb's grading table those minimums run R130 000 for grade 2, R450 000 for grade 3, R900 000 for grade 4 and R1,5 million for grade 5. Then R3 million, R9 million, R30 million and R90 million up to grade 9.
From grade 3 the table adds two more columns that catch people out: best annual turnover and available capital. At grade 3 that is R1 million and R100 000. Grade 4 wants R2 million and R200 000, and grade 5 asks R3,25 million with R650 000 beside it. By grade 9 it is R200 million and R40 million.
Read those together and the upgrade stops being a mystery. Nobody decides to become a grade 4. You get there by finishing a grade 3 job worth at least R900 000, invoiced and evidenced, with the turnover and the capital sitting beside it. The grading follows the work. It has never once led it.
One caution on the ceilings. Several tender advisory sites state that the figures include VAT, and they cite a cidb amendment notification for it. The cidb's own grading page does not say so either way. If a rand or two of headroom decides whether you may bid a job, confirm it with the cidb directly rather than trusting us or them.
Class of works beats grade, every time
A registration is a grade and a class together, and it is only valid for the class in which you proved competence.
- GB, general building. Permanent shelter. Houses, offices, schools, hospitals.
- CE, civil engineering. Roads, railways, bridges, water treatment works, dams, sewerage.
- ME, mechanical. Installing and maintaining mechanical infrastructure, including HVAC.
- EB, electrical in buildings. From the point of control to the point of consumption.
- EP, electrical in infrastructure. Generation, transmission, distribution. Power stations and substations.
Here is a live one. Public Works has advertised the replacement of the generator at the Johannesburg Constitutional Court, reference JHB 26/04, closing 16 September 2026 at 11:00 on the eTenders portal. The requirement reads, word for word, that the required CIDB is 3 EB or higher.
Grade 3 is a R3 million ceiling, which is a small number. A grade 7 CE contractor with thirty years of roads behind it cannot touch that generator and never will, because CE is not EB. A grade 3 EB firm that got there on one R450 000 job qualifies on the spot.
That is the whole lesson, and it costs nothing to learn.
What the board looked like in mid-September
On 14 September 2026 there were 2 336 tenders open on the portal. Of those, 1 015 are built-environment work, 215 sit on Gauteng ground including the West and East Rand, 554 close inside fourteen days, and 679 carry a briefing session.
That last figure is the expensive one. A compulsory briefing missed is a bid disqualified before anybody reads your price.
The specialist adverts are worth watching for a different reason. The NHBRC ran four five-year national panels in September. Geotechnical engineers and civil engineers closed on the 14th at 11:00. Underpinning and piling, and waterproofing of concrete roofs, closed on the 15th at the same hour.
None of those four adverts led with a big grade. Every one of them asked for a trade.
A small grade in the right class reaches work that a large grade in the wrong one cannot, and the panels prove it four times in one month.
The honest reading
A higher grade is not a better business. It is permission to bid bigger, bought with a track record you had to build and capital you had to hold.
The question worth answering is narrower, and you can answer it this afternoon. Of the work advertised in your class, in your province, closing in the next fortnight, how much sits under your ceiling? If it is most of it, your grade is not your constraint and upgrading solves nothing.
If you want a second pair of eyes on that, that is the kind of thing we do for contractors.
