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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All resources
Cost & pricing
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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Technology
What carbon tax does to a cement or steel price
CBAM cost EU importers 75,36 euro a tonne in early 2026. The carbon number that reaches an invoice in Boksburg is the R308 a tonne South Africa charges at home.
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Property & facilities
Who approves the quote in a sectional title scheme
There are 130 female sectional title owners for every 100 male owners, and the quote your contractor wrote is still addressed to a single homeowner.
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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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Technology
150MW of data centre, and which trades it buys
MTN is targeting 150MW across South Africa and Nigeria, and the trades that sell into a data centre are settled in the main contract before the shell goes up.
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Site & delivery
Construction work in the R2 trillion pipeline
Of 263 projects worth R1,99 trillion, the 54 in documentation are the ones that become tenders. The 82 under construction are somebody else's order book.
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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.