How to Price an Electrical Tender in South Africa

Electrical BOQs price differently from general building work — labour is a much larger share of the cost, testing and certification are easy to leave out, and small omissions compound fast across a large installation. Here's how to get it right.

Why labour dominates electrical pricing

On most building trades, material is the largest line item. Electrical work flips that: skilled labour, testing time, and compliance work often make up the majority of the price, especially on smaller installations where material cost is modest but the labour to install and certify it safely isn't. Pricing an electrical BOQ purely on cable and fitting cost, with a flat labour percentage on top, is the single most common way contractors underprice electrical tenders.

Building up a rate per point or circuit

Rather than pricing material and labour separately and adding them, build a composite rate per unit (per point, per circuit, per distribution board) that includes:

• Material — cable, conduit, fittings, distribution equipment, consumables (glands, ties, lugs) that rarely appear as their own BOQ line but add up.
• Labour — install time at your actual crew rate, not a generic day rate, adjusted for site conditions (ceiling access, existing occupancy, working hours restrictions).
• Plant — cable pulling equipment, elevated work platforms if needed, testing equipment.
• Preliminaries and general (P&Gs) — site supervision, safety officer time if required, and site establishment specific to electrical scope.

Don't forget testing, certification and COC

Every electrical installation in South Africa needs to be tested and a Certificate of Compliance (COC) issued before it can legally be connected or occupied. This isn't a formality you can add as an afterthought — testing takes real time, and a registered person has to sign it off. Price it as its own line, not folded silently into "labour," so it's visible and doesn't get value-engineered out under pressure to cut the price.

The most common omissions

• Standby/generator changeover work when a BOQ mentions backup power but doesn't itemise the changeover switch or wiring.
• Earthing and lightning protection, often specified in a separate section of the drawings that's easy to miss when pricing from the BOQ alone.
• Builder's work in connection — chasing, core drilling, and making good after installation, which is sometimes assumed to be someone else's scope without it being stated anywhere.
• Testing and COC, as above — the most commonly under-priced or entirely omitted line on electrical tenders.

Finding live electrical tenders

TenderGenie's live tender feed syncs directly from National Treasury's eTenders data every 6 hours, filterable to electrical work specifically — so you see only the tenders relevant to your trade, not every construction tender published that week. Once you find one, upload the BOQ and get an AI-priced starting point in minutes, using the build-up above as a sense check before you submit.