The South African construction toolkit
Construction calculators, cost data & tender tools.
Free building calculators, sourced cost-to-build data for twelve cities, and the tender tools South African contractors and quantity surveyors actually use. No sign-up.
- Cape TownR 12 430
- DurbanR 12 210
- JohannesburgR 11 000
- PretoriaR 11 000
- BloemfonteinR 9 350
- East LondonR 9 020
- GqeberhaR 9 020
- MthathaR 9 020
- KimberleyR 8 690
- MbombelaR 7 590
- PolokwaneR 7 040
- RustenburgR 6 710
AECOM 2025/26 base, adjusted by province. Excludes VAT, fees and municipal charges. Planning-stage estimates, not quotes.
- calculators
- 8
- cost pages
- 96
- cities
- 12
- tender tools
- 6
- contract forms
- 4
Calculators
All 8 calculators →- CostBuilding costEstimate the cost to build, per m², anywhere in South Africa.Calculate →
- MaterialsConcreteVolume, cement, sand, stone, and cost for a concrete pour.Calculate →
- MaterialsBrickHow many bricks and how much mortar a wall needs.Calculate →
- MaterialsPaintLitres of paint and cost for walls, by coat.Calculate →
- MaterialsRoofingSheet area and cost for a metal roof.Calculate →
- MaterialsRebarReinforcing steel mass and cost for a concrete element.Calculate →
- FinanceBond & transfer dutyMonthly home-loan repayment and SARS transfer duty.Calculate →
- CostTender pricingTurn direct cost into a tender price with P&G, overhead, and profit.Calculate →
Tender tools
All tools →- Free · no sign-upBoQ PricerImport a PDF, CSV or Excel BoQ, apply SA construction rate benchmarks, adjust per item, and export a priced BoQ as .xlsx.Open the tool →
- Interactive mapMunicipal Risk MapWill the municipality pay you? Every municipality scored 1 to 10 for payment risk.Open the tool →
- 12 workbooks · guidesP&G Calculator PackPreliminaries & general, priced and explained.Open the tool →
- Free · no sign-upElemental EstimateEarly-stage budget, split by element.Open the tool →
- 8 trade templatesMethod StatementSafe-work method statement, from a trade template.Open the tool →
- Quick-add hazardsHIRA AssessmentHazard identification & risk assessment register.Open the tool →
- GuideContractor FinancingFind the right funding tool.Open the tool →
Cost data
All 12 cities · 96 pages →Eight building types in every city. Johannesburg shown here, typical rate per square metre.
- House (standard)R 11 000R 9 000–R 14 000 / m²
- House (luxury)R 22 000R 15 600–R 40 000 / m²
- Townhouse complexR 11 500R 9 800–R 13 900 / m²
- Flat / apartmentR 13 500R 9 800–R 22 000 / m²
- WarehouseR 6 900R 5 400–R 8 800 / m²
- Office buildingR 15 000R 10 700–R 24 000 / m²
- Retail / shopR 13 500R 10 500–R 20 000 / m²
- SchoolR 10 000R 8 800–R 12 000 / m²
Contract Assistant
Stuck on a contract clause?
Common questions on NEC3, JBCC, GCC and FIDIC — compensation events, extensions of time, payment, notices — answered plainly. General guidance, not legal advice.
All contracts →- NEC3Programme-driven, collaborative. Common on SA infrastructure and public-sector works.
- JBCCThe South African building contract. Traditional, procedural, well-tested.
- GCC 2015The civil-engineering standard. Common on public-sector and municipal infrastructure.
- FIDICThe international standard. Seen on donor-funded and large cross-border SA infrastructure.
From a first number to a signed contract
Most construction money is committed early, long before anyone prices a bill of quantities. The tools here follow the order in which a project firms up, so you can use the right level of detail at each stage instead of guessing.
1. Is it affordable?
At feasibility you need a range, not a figure. The cost data gives a rate per square metre for eight building types in twelve cities, from R 6 710/m² for a standard house in Rustenburg to R 12 430/m² in Cape Town at the typical rate. Multiply by the floor area you need, add fees, municipal charges and VAT, and you know whether the idea is worth taking further. The bond calculator shows what that budget means as a monthly repayment.
2. What will this design cost?
Once there is a sketch plan, split the budget by element with the elemental estimate: substructure, frame, roof, finishes and services, each as a rate and a share of the total. It shows where the money sits, which is where the savings are. The material calculators answer the narrower questions that come up in design, such as how much concrete a slab takes or how many bricks a boundary wall needs.
3. What do we tender at?
When a bill of quantities arrives, the BoQ pricer imports it and suggests benchmark rates line by line, and the tender pricing calculator shows the mark-up you are adding for P&G, overhead, contingency and profit. The method-statement and HIRA generators produce the safety documents most tenders ask for under the Construction Regulations 2014. The guides on reading a BoQ and CIDB grading cover the questions contractors ask most at this stage.
4. Running the contract
After award, the work becomes contract administration: notices, programmes, variations, payment and the final account. The contract pages answer common questions on NEC3, JBCC, GCC 2015 and FIDIC, and the practitioner notes go deeper into the failures that cost contractors money, such as rejected NEC3 compensation events, programmes that never get accepted and JBCC final accounts that drift.
Guides
All guides →- Pricing · 6 min readWhat a fair P&G costs in 2026Preliminaries & general (P&G) explained: what it covers, the typical percentage of a South African contract, what inflates it, and how it's handled on extensions of time.
- Pricing · 7 min readHow to read a tender Bill of QuantitiesA plain-language guide to the structure of a Bill of Quantities — preliminaries, measured work, provisional and PC sums, dayworks and contingencies — and the pricing traps to watch for.
- Pricing · 6 min readHow to price a construction tenderFrom direct cost to submitted price: building up materials, labour, plant and subcontractors, then adding P&G, overhead, profit, contingency and VAT — with a note on pricing risk.
- Compliance · 7 min readCIDB grading, explainedHow the CIDB Register of Contractors works: the grade 1–9 tender-value bands, the classes of works (GB, CE, EB, EP, ME), how your grade is set, and how to register and upgrade.
- Contracts · 8 min readNEC3 vs JBCC — which contract, and how they differA practical comparison of the two dominant SA construction contracts: where each is used, JBCC's traditional model vs NEC3's programme-driven collaboration, and how change and payment are handled.
- MonthlyThe Rate SheetMonthly rate review. Every issue is published in full.
Where the numbers come from
Building rates start from the AECOM Africa Property & Construction Cost Guide 2025/26 and are adjusted by province using ooba’s 2025/26 build-cost table. The material calculators and the BoQ pricer use a sourced benchmark rate library, and each calculator names its source under the result. Every month, The Rate Sheet re-prices the material rate library from live supplier listings and reports what moved. Every page states its source and its method, so you can check the figure rather than trust it.
Who builds it
Setout is run from Bloemfontein by a quantity surveyor and construction project manager with more than a decade on mining, commercial, rail and higher-education projects. The toolkit exists because the same early questions come up on every job, and most of the answers online are written for other countries’ markets and contracts. Read more about Setout.
The Setout list
The Rate Sheet — one email a month
We re-price every material in the rate library each month and send what moved, with the read-across for the bill you are pricing. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Read the latest issue before you subscribe — every issue is published in full.