Last week, a bridge waiting on its steel. This week, the whole industry is.

South Africa’s steel fabricators say they cannot always get the sections they need, and they are asking government for help.

Meanwhile in Cape Town, inspectors, police, and Home Affairs are turning up on sites together, and the City now wants paperwork before you can even tender.

And for dessert, the Great Wall of China was held together with rice porridge. Seriously.

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Fabricators are struggling to get the sections they need, and the shortage is hitting programmes.

Remember last week’s Msikaba bridge, delayed by trouble at its steel fabricator? Turns out the bridge has company.

On 9 October, the Southern African Institute of Steel Construction (SAISC) confirmed that its fabricating members have been hit by supply constraints since ArcelorMittal South Africa closed its Newcastle long steel operations. Long steel is the family of beams, angles, and channels that hold up roofs and frames.

SAISC CEO Amanuel Gebremeskel says the shortages have made it hard for fabricators to price, programme, and deliver projects with certainty. In plain English, quotes get shorter lives, and dates get softer.

There is a twist. To protect local steelmaking, import tariffs on several long steel products went up to 10% from May. Now SAISC is asking for temporary tariff relief, as a bridge while new local supply gets going. A new scrap based producer was expected to start operating this year.

Why the fuss? According to SAISC, fabricators and related businesses account for more than 90% of jobs in the steel industry, against 5% to 10% at the mills that benefit directly from tariff protection.

For the trade, the takeaway is simple. If your job has structural steel in it, assume the supply chain is tighter than it was a year ago, and plan for it now rather than when the fabricator phones with bad news.

And whatever you do, do not solve a missing section by quietly swapping in whatever is on the rack. More on that in this week’s Build better.

Tight steel, softer dates. Order early and plan for it.

Inspectors, police, and Home Affairs are now visiting sites together. And compliance is becoming the price of entry.

Picture a site on Lower Long Street in the Cape Town CBD. In May, the Building Industry Bargaining Council (BIBC) arrived with the Department of Employment and Labour, Home Affairs, Immigration Services, SAPS, Metro Police, and traffic officials, all at once. They checked registrations, wages, benefit contributions, and more.

It was not a one off. The BIBC says it has taken part in 4 joint operations led by the Department of Employment and Labour since November 2025, covering health and safety, immigration, and labour law. Separately, the department said in August that 891 Western Cape contractors had been found non compliant since the start of the year.

Here is the bit that changes the game. The City of Cape Town now makes BIBC compliance a minimum requirement for construction tender applications. No compliance, no bid.

And the pressure seems to be working. The BIBC reports compliance up 20% in the first month of the August to October quarter compared with last year, with new employee registrations up 39%. It does note that compliance status is dynamic and can change as different criteria are checked.

The BIBC covers the Greater Cape Peninsula building sector, so this is a Western Cape story for now. But compliance as a condition of tendering is the sort of idea other cities tend to borrow.

If you work in Cape Town, check your registration, your benefit contributions, and your subcontractors’ paperwork before your next tender, not the night before it closes.

Get compliant before the knock on the site gate, not after.

Remember our Roman concrete story, the 2000 year old mix that heals its own cracks? China had its own secret recipe, and it came from the kitchen.

Ming dynasty builders, who rebuilt much of the Great Wall between 1368 and 1644, mixed their lime mortar with sticky rice soup. In 2010, researchers led by Zhang Bingjian at Zhejiang University worked out why it is so tough. A starch in the rice called amylopectin controls how the lime’s calcium carbonate crystals grow, packing them into a tight, compact structure that resists water and stays strong.

The researchers called it possibly the world’s first composite mortar, and the recipe goes back about 1,500 years. It has since been used to repair the 800 year old Shouchang Bridge in eastern China.

The workers were reportedly not thrilled. One account says the rice meant to feed them was taken to make the mortar. Lunch, or the wall. Tough call.

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