The National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) is revising its home-building manual to include the new regulations and standards of the past 15 years.

NHBRC special projects adviser Jeffrey Mahachi tells Engineering News that new technologies, such as lightweight steel framing, have been adopted and need to be incorporated into the manual.

Calls for comments closed last month and a substantial number of comments from industry had been received. Mahachi notes that those in the industry commended the organisation for drafting a reliable document.

The NHBRC has also engaged with the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS), as the manual references standards by SABS.

“We hope to package a manual with relevant standards for stakeholders, and it should be out in the next three months,” says Mahachi.

He notes that a major challenge the new manual will address is foreign products entering the South African market, as those products do not meet the standards of the SABS and are not manufactured for South Africa’s climatic conditions.

“These products need to be stopped. We need to work with the National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications to ensure that products are not dumped in South Africa.”

Further, he states that the home-building industry has had a significant number of engineers who do not work on site to inspect specifications.

He attributes this to incompetence and to homeowners not paying engineers adequately.

Mahachi notes that some homeowners prefer to pay an architect for the home’s aesthetics, rather than pay an engineer to ensure that the home meets the required standards.

The new manual addresses this issue and the NHBRC has compiled a list of competent persons and certified bodies to try to curb this practice.

Mahachi states that there is an abundance of relevant technology that could be used in the home-building industry, but added that many small and medium-sized enterprises own the technology and do not have the finances to roll out the technology.

“Some technologies can offer significant advantages and, if we adopt them, we can address the housing backlog that we are faced with. Some innovative products might look expensive, but they address the time factor and are, therefore, cheaper. Some offer competitively good prices from a life-cycle point of view,” he says.

He adds that there is a lack of social acceptability of innovative technology, and that many homeowners believe that certain innovative materials are not of a high quality, despite tests being conducted by Agrément South Africa, the internationally acknowledged body that provides assurance through technical approvals of nonstandard or unconventional products.

Mahachi notes that government aims to deliver 1.5-million housing opportunities to South Africans in the next five years, but adds that there are challenges regarding material quality, time to deliver and costs.

There is a backlog of more than 2.2-million subsidised houses, with government being able to deliver 160 000 to 200 000 houses a year, he adds. At this rate of delivery, it will take more than 15 years to eradicate the backlog.

Despite the challenges, Mahachi believes that the future of the industry is bright and notes that housing numbers are increasing in the subsidy and nonsubsidy markets.

“In terms of nonsubsidised houses, we expect the number of new houses being registered to be about 50 000 a year. We saw a slight growth in the last financial year. We also expect about 160 000 units of subsidised homes to be registered and we are looking at more than 200 000 houses being delivered a year,” he says.