With the South African government earmarking R827-billion for infrastructure development over the next three years, the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) has indicated its concern after its recent Construction Industry Indicators (CII) report revealed that only about 50% of South Africa’s construction tenders were evaluated on quality, price and preference.

The yearly CIDB CII measures the performance of the construction industry, focusing on the clients, the clients’ consultants and contractors.

The CIDB advocated that quality should be taken into consideration when evaluating construction-related tenders worth more than R1-million, where the nature of work requires quality, reliability, viability, durability and consideration of the bidders’ technical capacity and ability to execute a contract.

The 2013 CII report showed that over 80% of construction work contracts in the public sector were awarded to contractors in CIDB Grades 7, 8 or 9 in the general building and civil engineering classes of works. These are contractors graded by the CIDB to carry out work from R40-million and above. The grading system categorises contractors according to the extent of their capability to carry out construction projects.

Only 6% to 8% of construction work contracts in the public sector were found to be awarded to the CIBD's lower Grades 2 to 4 contractors, as prime contractors.

Over 14 000 contractors were registered on the CIDB register of contractors in Grades 2 to 9. At least 90% of these contractors were in Grades 2 to 4.

The CII report further indicated that public sector clients were dissatisfied with the performance of contractors in at least 7% of work carried out, with 2% of the work showing defects that were considered to be inappropriate. According to the CII report, the level of clients’, as well as contractors’, dissatisfaction was higher in large projects, increasing with the size of the project.