Following at least four fatal construction site accidents in 20 months, the Master Builders Association (MBA) North has called for urgent measures to improve oversight and accountability in the construction sector.
Gavin Morrow, the newly-elected president of the MBA North, describes the current situation in the local construction industry as a crisis. This follows incidents such as the George building collapse in which 34 people died in May 2024, the death of two people in a structural collapse in Phoenix, KwaZulu-Natal, in March 2025, the collapse of a temple under construction in Verulam, KwaZulu-Natal that left five people dead and several injured in December 2025, and the Ormonde, Gauteng, building collapse in which nine people died and three were injured this month.
These incidents offer further evidence that systemic reform cannot wait, the MBA North says.
Shrinking margins squeeze out quality and controls
Morrow says: “These incidents reflect the state of the industry – it has been in decline for many years. Construction investment has dropped, there are now many smaller and more unregistered players competing in the sector, going in with razor thin margins. When the margins reduce, business owners start looking to cut non-essential operational activities, and among the first things that get cut are quality; and health and safety. Many contractors view these as a nice-to-have – not essential.”
He notes adhering to the industry health and safety protocols can be costly and time consuming, so some contractors are tempted to cut corners.
Quality is another key area where contractors may attempt to cut costs, he says.
“Construction companies should have quality departments and onsite quality controllers to design and monitor onsite method statements and quality checks. As the project runs through its life cycle, there must be checks and balances: Has the concrete cured to the correct strength? Has the rebar been placed as per design and checked? Are the right materials being used?” Morrow says.
“Unfortunately, as the margins reduce, business owners start looking at ways to extract more from each project. That is where the quality gets impacted, and this is what could cause incidents like structural collapses.”
He adds: “Another factor is that as the industry gets more competitive, contractors start cutting back on project staffing allowables, impacting the calibre of resources they put on the project. Quite often they won’t put the correctly skilled, competent, knowledgeable site agent on a project because that level of experience costs more. Instead, they might put more junior people on site and hope the project gets through.”
By having skilled, knowledgeable site agents and contractors onsite, the chances of potential design errors or oversight could be picked up, whereas inexperienced staff might not.
“Adding to this, you’ve got government and regulatory bodies like the NHBRC and CIDB who are supposed to do the inspections and investigations and ensure compliance from a contractor perspective, yet they are not effective,” Morrow says.
“You might register a project with the NHBRC and never see an inspector on site, yet their mandate is to check that things are being done properly. Likewise, the Labour Department is not on-site checking, not just whether undocumented foreign nationals are working on the site, but also that the project is compliant with health and safety regulations and that the labour is being looked after,” he says.
Proliferation of non-compliant builders
Jose Correia, MBA North member and Managing Director of Tiber Construction, points to another key issue impacting quality and safety on construction sites: “Few serious incidents occur on projects by registered, compliant contractors and MBA members. Many of these incidents occur where clients have opted for the lowest cost contractors who are not registered with recognised industry bodies,” he says.
He notes that formal compliance requires certain systems to be in place, supervision and recurring training that raises costs, making their services more expensive.
“Many companies now operate in an unregulated environment – they are non-compliant, and this increases the risk of accidents resulting in fatalities,” Correia says.
“The moment reputable contractors submit documents to the Department of Labour indicating that they intend commencing works, that is the department’s ticket to audit you. But the sites that aren’t registering aren’t inspected. There’s no real way to regulate them unless they’ve got feet on the ground that physically drive around and look for construction sites and implement audits and inspections, which is what I think they are trying to do going forward,” he says.
Correia adds: “Another big problem we are currently experiencing is the low margin environment; developers are struggling to make feasibilities work and thus not reaping the rewards of the past. Developments are highly dependent on how quickly you can deliver a product to market. So automatically, you push the timelines, and that creates another problem altogether, because that’s where shortcuts are taken and problems happen.”
Turning the tide
Morrow says “To address these challenges, Master Builders South Africa is busy putting together a dashboard action plan around what needs to be done now, and this is focused on putting pressure on bodies like the CIDB, NHBRC and the government to start acting. We need to acknowledge that the industry is in crisis and start behaving like it is in crisis.”
Morrow believes that the government’s planned R1.07 trillion infrastructure investment could be a significant turning point for the sector: “For the industry, it would be huge. It could push up the margins, contractors could be a bit more selective with what they are prepared to price on, and they would be more open to paying for better skilled staff to be on site.”
Master Builders South Africa, along with its regions like MBA North, are working to help address the situation.
Morrow says: “As an industry association, we work to keep the pressure on regulatory bodies and the government to try and ensure that they do what they’ve been mandated to do. Our representatives sit on various boards with a mandate of trying to ensure that regulatory bodies improve their performance.”
“MBA North is a voluntary organisation servicing members from the emerging contractor to the larger established contractors. For the smaller and emerging contractors, it plays a role in upskilling, training and assisting with legal advice, health and safety and quality information. A large part of our mandate is to raise the flag of health and safety on site. In line with this, we have health and safety competitions every year, where contractors participate to indicate their commitment to health and safety,” he says.
“I think there is a direct correlation between those companies that participate in these types of competitions and the level of health and safety compliance on site. It would be very rare to find a tragedy like a fatal structural collapse on site with one of those companies purely because they take health and safety so seriously. And invariably, if they take health and safety seriously, the quality will be there as well.”
Gerhard Roets, Health and Safety Manager for MBA North, manages the MBA North health and safety competitions, occupational health and safety training, member site inspections, safety audits and facilitates webinars to discuss industry topics, like structural collapses and how to prevent future occurrences. Roets says, “Sadly, the industry is not learning from the past experiences, and the Ormonde tragedy will unfortunately not be the last and final occurrence.”
On the MBA North’s role in enhancing health and safety and quality on site, he says: “Health and Safety is a key pillar of MBA North’s work – we offer webinars, seminars and on-site training to help members continually improve health and safety on site. Our training is highly topical too – for example, we hosted a webinar on the reputational damage in the construction industry of a structural collapse barely a month before the George building collapse. We also work closely with FEM to host training sessions and the popular annual health and safety competition, which attracts up to 75 participating companies every year. We find that members who participate actively in our health and safety programmes are more aware of health, safety and quality concerns on site.”
