Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa June/ July 2019 | Page 18

COVER STORY
WCPDF conference unveils property devel-
opment process model
members of the WCPDF Management Committee, with Van
Zyl being the organisation’s chairperson.
According to the experiences of professionals involved in
property development and construction, it currently takes an
average of between four and eight years to complete a devel-
opment in Cape Town – double the time when compared to
a few years ago.
In 2017, noting the impact that the long development
process was having on housing affordability, Rob McGaffin
from URERU agreed to further develop the model with the
assistance of (then) recently graduated student Lewin Rolls
and, later, Mida Kirova, a town planner with Nigel Burls
& Associates. Chris Steffen, a
quantity surveyor with Talani,
later incorporated costings into
it to highlight the time-related
“This crisis is also the reason
financial implications. Further
valuable input was also received
that we have themed this
from various professionals in the
industry along the way.
year’s conference ‘The Perfect
“
In response to this, academics
from the University of Cape
Town’s (UCT’s) Nedbank Urban
Real Estate Research Unit
(URERU) and industry members
representing the Western Cape
Property Development Forum
(WCPDF) have joined forces to
produce a Property Development
Process Model in a major effort to
determine why the development
process currently takes so long,
the objective of which is to
identify the blockages and find
solutions to shorten the unwieldy
timeframe.
Storm: Investment and jobs or
bureaucracy and stagnation,’ and
our model underlines the severity
of the situation. But its primary aim
is to provide both the private and
public sectors with something of
substance to discuss and debate
so that we can get one of the
largest contributing sectors to the
economy rolling again.’
The model was revealed to the
public at the annual conference of the WCPDF, held at the
Century City Conference Centre on Thursday 16 May, by Rob
McGaffin ̶ a senior lecturer with UCT’s Department of
Construction Economics and Management which also hosts
the URERU.
The process model was originally conceptualised in 2014
by project management firms, MDA and its consultants
Jedd Grimbeek and Johan Slabber, and Alwyn Laubscher &
Associates’ current CEO, Deon van Zyl, to graphically identify
their own firms’ experience of the protracted development
initiative timeframes. Grimbeek and Van Zyl are both
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JUNE/JULY 2019 SA Real Estate Investor Magazine
Explaining the need for the
model at this point in time and
the drive to complete it in time
for the conference, Van Zyl notes:
“The crisis in the development
and construction industry is
really only now hitting the media
headlines, because companies as
large as Group Five are closing
their doors. But members within
our industries have been warning
of this crisis for years, and it is
one driven largely by politics and
bureaucratic red tape.”
“
This expanded timeframe,
largely due to a long, complex
and uncertain regulatory approval
process, is now severely curtailing
the development of much-needed
private and public infrastructure,
and has come to undermine the
construction industry significantly.
“This crisis is also the reason
that we have themed this year’s
conference ‘The Perfect Storm:
Investment and jobs or bureaucracy and stagnation,’ and our
model underlines the severity of the situation. But its primary
aim is to provide both the private and public sectors with
something of substance to discuss and debate so that we can
get one of the largest contributing sectors to the economy
rolling again.’
The model displays an indicative graphic timeline of the
property development process in Cape Town, and illustrates
the complexities of the process from start to finish, from
the initial three-year project initiation phase to obtaining
land rights, and then through procurement, construction