A building developer adopting minimal impact materials for low to middle income housing in South Africa

Abstract

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY I have identified a need for a coordinated approach to green building, minimal impact and modular residential building construction company in the South African low-middle income property development market. There lies immense potential to industrialise and bring to mainstream the new methods of using recyclable materials in home construction in a country facing rapid declines in natural resources, increasing industrial waste build-up and burgeoning rural-to-urban migration, to populations that face inhumane living conditions in makeshift shelters. The business opportunity is anchored in building fast, with reduced easy to manage resources and lowered operational costs. The anticipated outcomes include high quality affordable housing, increased property value, high turnout and turnaround times on building efficiency, safer leaving conditions, well planned residential neighbourhoods, efficient reuse of waste and recyclable by products and making a good profit for potential investors in the business. Greenbuild technology has been around for over a decade and in that time, the start-up costs have lowered, and product innovations has rapidly developed to industrial production levels in major economies around the world, such as US, Europe and China. Africa has been slow in adopting the technology. In South Africa, the use of green and minimal impact materials has been in experimental stage by innovative corporate developers looking to get Green Star ratings and bragging points. The number of informal settlements continue to increase throughout South Africa, mainly constructed using industrial waste materials to build unsafe structures for shelter, under worsening extreme weather conditions and fire dangers. Government struggles to meet production of the low-cost state provided and subsidised housing, at a rate fast enough to curb formation of these informal settlements, in the face of rapidly dangerous and destructive service delivery protest across the country. The proposed business is aimed at taking advantage of high-quality alternative building products, produced using recycled materials, to build structurally rigid, safer structures that will have an appreciating property value to financially empower the owner, and present them with economical leverage to participate in the country’s economy. Critical success factors will reveal themselves in the number of reskilled and employed young, technically skilled labour from FET colleges and training centres; the reduction in informal settlements over the next decade; the increase in formalised residential communities with higher or increasing property value; the economical participation of the previously disadvantaged population in the residential property market; the formal adoption of green building and use of alternative minimal impact materials in housing construction; and a profitable business venture the in mass production of such products.