A review of Tongaat Mall disaster in November 2013 mirrors the colossal and tragic price the country is paying for sacrificing quality in the adjudication of tenders for the bidder with the highest BBBEE score. And it is only the tip of the iceberg.
Chickens were coming home to roost perhaps. The President of the Consulting Engineers of South Africa (CESA), Abe Thela, said he was not surprised that the government and the construction industry did not seem to speak the same language in terms of critical decisions governing the awarding of tenders. “The tendering system, whereby large projects are awarded principally on price and broad based black economic empowerment rather than quality, has badly damaged the relationship between industry and the government,” he lamented.
There was no better alternative to quality, and the current system needed to be revised, he added. “Only if we can compete on quality we can bring quality to the government and bring resources that the government desperately needs and does not have.”