The construction of the new medium security correctional centre at Kimberley is nearing completion. The facility will provide accommodation for 3 000 adult male offenders

Contractor Grinaker-LTA, a subsidiary of the JSE-listed Aveng Group, has announced that it’s on track to handover the prototype prison in July this year. The firm’s R821-million construction contract is being undertaken in a joint venture with BEE company Keren Kula construction.

The contract has created significant employment opportunities in the area, with 1 400 people employed on site at its peak. Of these, 140 are ex-offenders, reports Cyril Kitching, senior contracts manager at Grinaker-LTA Building Inland.

Situated on Griekwastad Road, 1 km outside Kimberley, the prison features a design that’s planned to serve as a model for other new correctional facilities in South Africa. “The design is based on the focal point of the layout being the 10m wide ‘street’, which serves as the main corridor for the movement of people and the transportation of goods,” Kitching explains. A central control room is situated in the middle, to monitor this thoroughfare, with additional control rooms at each end of the “street”. Various buildings are situated on either side of it, including medical and education facilities, bakery and textile factory, a vocational training centre, multi-purpose hall, kitchen, laundry, social workers’ units and segregation unit.

“The 12 accommodation blocks and three recreation centres are situated behind these buildings, on both sides of the street,” states Kitching. Visitors’ and administration buildings, stores warehouse, offices and a garage for state vehicles also form part of the complex. Sports fields are being established.

Kitching says that the buildings are generally reinforced concrete structures with brick walls. Roofs are timber or structural steel with sheet metal covering and concrete roofs over secure areas. The prison complex comprises buildings totalling more than 41 574 m2 in size.

In addition to utilising local labourers, sub-contractors and suppliers wherever possible on this contract, Grinaker-LTA also offered a special HIV/Aids awareness programme in which all workers participated. In addition, the contractor worked with the National Youth Service and Training Programme to offer training and employment opportunities to youngsters aspiring to work in the construction industry. A total of 98 youths were trained in plumbing, electrical, carpentry, masonry and painting. The current labour force on this contract consists of 1 287 workers, of which 870 are from the local community and 149 are women, Kitching reports. “We make use of 31 subcontractors, which range from independent subcontractors and domestic subcontractors to nominated subcontractors doing specialised work such as electrical and mechanical installations. A huge number of suppliers are being used, most of which are local enterprises,” he concludes.

Growthpoint has an excellent risk diversification both geographically and sectorally.

Property fund Hospitality says its distributions per linked A-unit for the six months to December were at 54.72c, up from the 52.11c reported for the previous period.

Growthpoint Properties Limited, the largest South African listed property company, today announced that it has achieved distribution growth of 10.2% for the 6 month interim period to 31 December 2008 when compared to the company’s prior interim period

Yvonne Nkosi smiled from under her pink cap, beaming at her contribution to South Africa's World Cup dreams as she applies silicone to a seating beam in Nelspruit's new football stadium.

"Before, I was working for peanuts," the 22-year-old said. "Somebody told me about work here, so I came here. I want to see what's going to happen in 2010. I want to go to a game."

Wearing blue coveralls and steel-toed shoes, Nkosi said she went for a two-week course to learn how to apply silicone to joints in the stadium.

"We are happy with the World Cup," she said.

She is among 1,000 workers in the football complex being built in Nelspruit, a northeastern town also known as Mbombela.

On the roof, near the cranes and in the skyboxes, men and women look like ants on a hill as they work to complete the stadium for FIFA by December.

About 20,000 people are currently working on 10 stadiums across South Africa for the World Cup, a relief in a country where around 40% of the work force is unemployed.

The municipality of Mbombela, which includes Nelspruit, expects to see 17,000 jobs created between 2005 and 2010 tied to road construction and the building of the 46,000-seat stadium.

Between 60% and 70% of those jobs are going to people from around Nelspruit, which has more than 600,000 people in the metro area, at the gateway to the world-famous Kruger wild game park.

Leon Botha, the stadium's chief engineer, said workers were first recruited from the nearby township of Matsafeni.

"If they don't have specific skills or enough workers, we move outside Matsafeni but into Mbombela. Only then, we go outside to recruit mostly specialised workers," Botha said.

Labour groups praised the efforts at employing locals, but worry about their future after 2010.

"We appreciate that the local community was employed, but part of the commitment was to develop and empower the people.

The stadium is a short-term project," said George Ledwaba, local representative of the National Union of Mineworkers.

"Any training should have a long term benefit," he said. "You not only learn how to push the wire, they should teach us how to electrify."

Wage disputes have also caused several strikes at the stadiums in Nelspruit, Cape Town and Durban.

"I don't even think about 2010 any more, because too many things are going wrong," said 26-year-old Charles Chiloane, a welder who said his euphoria at finding a job in 2007 has already worn off.

He's working for 14.48 rand (€1.10, $1.40) an hour, which is nearly double his starting salary.

Another grievance: for two years, the children of Matsafeni have been going to school in containers, after their original campus located at the foot of the construction site was turned into offices for the builders.

"They promised us a new school. We are still waiting for it," said community leader James Maseko, who said the community also still needs improved roads, electricity and clean water.

The city has promised to finish the new school, but only after the World Cup.

"They should have built a college rather than a stadium," said Florenc Phoku (EDS: correct) as she hoed in her garden outside her neat wooden house that had neither water nor electricity.

"They're spending millions but they don't employ us," she said.

At more than 40 years old, she had already exceeded the maximum age to work at the 920-million-rand ($90.2 million, €69.4 million). She is still without work.

Outside the construction site, many people wait patiently every day in hope of work, including footballer and carpenter Bheka Maziwa.

"I didn't put my strength into it, so I want to be sure this thing is all right," he joked of the stadium, where he will not have the means to attend a game when the tournament comes in 500 days.

Record order books are expected to help construction stocks maintain decent earnings growth in the new year, but beyond that the future is uncertain as the global credit crisis eats up future work opportunities.

South Africa‘s big-four construction firms boast a combined R120 billion order book, thanks to the phenomenal sector growth in the lead-up to the 2010 Fifa World Cup, as well as developments in other markets.

While these order books will certainly build up construction groups‘ coffers, the global economic slowdown – which is expected to deepen next year – may open floodgates of project cancellations and delays.

So, while “the outlook for next year is pretty decent, future work opportunities have been reduced”, says one analyst, who declined to be named.

Already Murray & Roberts, the country‘s largest construction firm, has had to adjust its books after its Trump Tower joint venture in Dubai was suspended, wiping R3,2-billion off its R61-billion order book, although the firm landed a R6-billion contract to build a terminal at Dubai International Airport shortly after this.

Underscoring predictions of the tough trading conditions ahead are union claims that Murray & Roberts is planning to axe workers as the rough trading environment restricts its ability to expand.

Group Five disclosed in an interview that there “had been a small and immaterial reduction” in the number of projects in the African mining sector and that “one small housing project” for a mining firm had been cancelled.

Eskom has also terminated the procurement processes for the proposed multi-billion-rand Nuclear-1 power plant project.

Aveng and Murray & Roberts were in two separate consortiums bidding to build the power plant, with Aveng saying the termination was “understandable” and that it had confidence in the continued infrastructure roll-out in the markets in which it operated.

“I don‘t think we have seen the last of these project cancellations and delays,” the construction analyst said.

Project flow from the mining sector is expected to worsen in the new year, with Group Five having already seen a slowdown in African copper mining.

Mining companies across the world are cutting back on production as weakening commodity prices bite into earnings, with Anglo American and Anglo Platinum expected to slash capital expenditure in half when they announce revised spending plans next week.

Together with public sector spending, construction companies also based their original rosy 2009 outlooks on “continuing demand for commodities”, which was expected to spur expansions in the mining sector, although many miners are now cutting back.

Aveng has downplayed the impact of the global crisis, saying its project pipeline remained strong, but it is “taking longer for clients to finalise projects”.

For the next few years the sector is banking on South Africa‘s multibillion-rand infrastructure spending, but if the national treasury is unable to raise funds offshore to counter shrinking foreign capital inflows it may need to reprioritise its spending plans.

South Africa is spending R600-billion over the next three years to upgrade and build new roads, power generation and transmission, rail, ports, pipelines, hospitals, prisons and schools.

Another analyst said the fact that Eskom – which accounts for the bulk of the infrastructure package – had to shelve its nuclear project suggested that even governments, albeit to a lesser extent, were feeling the pinch of tighter credit lending.

“Those with no exposure to public sector spending are in for a rough time,” the analyst said.

But all big-four construction companies are comprehensively exposed to this multi-billion-rand package, with Murray & Roberts saying it will drive annual growth of 15% to 25% through to at least 2014.

A new Industrial Vacancy Report has been brought out by Sapoa covering the major industrial nodes of South Africa and shows that the vacancy rate is on average under 3 percent

Mandy Ramsden, Chairman of the Association of Unit Trusts (APUT), comments on National Treasury’s latest document regarding the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) proposals

South Africans keen to invest in an Australian property should consider that one day they might relocate to the home they originally acquired as an investment.

From a national perspective, office space in all of South Africa’s major business centres is at a premium. With limited speculative development in the past five or six years, most excess good quality stock has been taken up and landlords find themselves in a favourable position