Investigation into the process of providing office accommodation for national state departments in South Africa

Abstract

The National Department of Public Works has the responsibility of providing office accommodation to all state departments nationally, The objectives of the paper are to establish a base for evaluating the performance of the process and secondly investigate the performance against this base. Critical success factors were found to be: Better site search and space management, Effective maintenance policy, Extensive feasibility studies, Standardised lease agreements, Effective property management, Sustainable site procurement and Client-driven service delivery. In the performance evaluation it was found that turn-around times were poor due to lack of resources, asset registers were incomplete, the frequency and quality of maintenance services rendered were unsatisfactory, and the implementation of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the procurement of new sites were not seen as adequate partly due to political pressures.