Van Zyl, J.Van Vuuren, P.Crous, C.Ramabitsa, Diao Leeu2023-09-062023-09-062022http://hdl.handle.net/11660/12165Thesis (Ph.D (Business Administration))--University of the Free State, 2022In the year 2010, the South African government, through its soccer body namely South African Football Association, hosted the first Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) soccer world cup in the African continent and invested heavily in infrastructures such as roads, rail networks, and sports facilities. This was seen as an opportunity to help eradicate poverty, reduce unemployment, and achieve high economic growth. However, the construction industry, despite its performance in global economic growth and job creation to skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled workforce, is still faced with the central quandary of a high failure rate in the early stages of operation due to contributing factors such as low barriers to entry, deficiency of skills, formal qualifications, relevant industry experience, and management and leadership skills. Moreover, the government has several initiatives, such as institutions providing financial assistance to Small Micro Medium Enterprises (SMMEs), but these have not resulted in a tangible improvement in upgrading to upper grades that address the congestion in the construction industry. Therefore, these challenges impede the growth, development, and sustainability of construction SMMEs, which mostly remain congested in the lower-grades. Thus, this research aimed to develop recommendations that will assist lower-grade construction-based SMMEs in the Free State province to become sustainable in their business. Following the literature study, the study adopted the quantitative research approach, and a self-administered questionnaire was designed based on information emanating from an extant literature review. District-based enumerators were appointed and inducted in all Free State province district municipalities to assist with the distribution and collection of questionnaires to construction SMMEs in possession of Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) grading one to four in both Civil Engineering and General Building classes of works. The probability stratified random sampling method was adopted for the study and the self-administered questionnaires were distributed to a sample of 485 participants, of which 431 were received back, representing an 89% response rate. Findings from the study indicated that corrupt activities within the construction industry and use of political connections to gain an unfair advantage on government contractor development programmes with few benefiting from the programme were major challenges. Along with these challenges are also the importance of effective and efficient use of cash flow to improve and sustain the business operations; the need for investing in right construction equipment to improve business success; recruiting and retaining qualified, competent and experienced personnel which is key in the improvement and the sustainability of the business. The study further revealed that the critical barriers to the sustainability of construction SMMEs in the Free State are; high competition and limited access to projects/work opportunities; higher entry due to lack of regulations; political influence in awarding contracts and lack of industry experience were the main critical factors hindering the sustainability of lower-grade construction based SMMEs in the Free State province. To attain this required objective based on these findings, the literature review and a quantitative research method recommends that, although many construction SMMEs are stagnant on lower-grades, the establishment of a panel of experienced, qualified and competent professional registered experts in all engineering fields to monitor progress and quality; national blacklisting of all stakeholders involved in corrupt activities within government and a minimum period of 10 years be imposed as well as instituting criminal charges against all responsible individuals; recruitment process for the interested contractors in Contractor Development Programmes(CDPs) be stringent, yet done in an objective, fair, and transparent manner; compulsory 30% subcontracting to local based SMMEs clause be included in every government tenders; for all work opportunities seeking CIDB grading of 1 or 2 within local government, only local SMMEs are allowed to bid to alleviate the congestion and improve their sustainability.enConstruction based SMMEssustainabilitythe timmons model of the entrepreneurial processcidbcdpfree state provincecivil engineeringgeneral buildingThesisUniversity of the Free State