Abstract
Abstract : t South Africa has come a long way in addressing the housing backlog for the poor and has even taken further steps by providing a regulatory environment for energy efficient houses. The benefits of including energy efficiency are increasingly becoming realized, not only due to reduction in pollution but due to the additional electricity crisis affecting most South Africans. Many challenges, however, lie ahead with finding a balance between eradicating informal settlements and providing energy efficiency measures, taking into account the escalating cost of building materials. The South African regulatory environment provides for the implementation of innovative building technologies (IBT). However, the uptake of these IBTs to assist in fast delivery of houses and social infrastructure is very slow. The aim of this paper is to report on an investigation carried out on a few case studies where IBTs have been used in housing developments, by collating the data from the projects, analysing the challenges and making recommendations. The major challenge identified in the implementation of the IBTs is the construction cost. Cost analysis and comparisons are made in the paper, and it is apparent from the results that the construction costs of IBTs compare favourably with convectional construction. However, for single story units, the cost for implementing IBTs are not significantly reduced. On availability of more data, it is recommended that a more detailed life cycle cost be performed. In addition, a Housing Innovation Maturity Model is proposed in order to unify the understanding and interpretation of “innovation” in housing.