About
The South African construction toolkit.
A set-out is the first physical act on site — pegs in the ground, lines transferred from the drawing to the dirt. It’s where a project either starts right or quietly starts wrong. That’s the idea behind Setout: get the numbers and the contract right before the concrete goes down.
Setout is a free toolkit for South African contractors, quantity surveyors and anyone pricing or running building work. It brings together the things you reach for when a tender or a project is in front of you:
- Calculators
Building cost, concrete, brick, paint, roofing, rebar, bond and tender pricing — each with its formula shown.
- Cost data
What it costs to build per m², across twelve cities and eight building types, with the method behind each figure.
- Contract Assistant
Common questions on NEC3, JBCC, GCC and FIDIC, answered plainly.
- Tender tools
A Bill of Quantities pricer and compliance document generators.
How we work
- Every number shows its working
- Each calculator prints its formula and its assumptions. Each cost estimate shows the method and the source. If you can't see how a figure was reached, you can't trust it on a tender — so we show it.
- Sourced, not invented
- Cost rates are calibrated to the AECOM property & construction cost guide and provincial data; transfer duty follows the SARS brackets; rate benchmarks draw on published South African data. Sources are cited on the page.
- Free, no sign-up
- The calculators, cost data, contract answers and tender tools are free to use and need no account. Email capture is opt-in, for updates only.
- Guidance, not advice
- The contract answers are general guidance on how the standard forms work — not legal advice, and no substitute for the contract and its amendments on your project. The estimates are planning-stage figures, not quotes.
Beyond the free tools
For teams who want more than the calculators, Setout also offers editable contract administration template packs — drafting and administration starters that work alongside the official NEC3, JBCC, GCC and FIDIC contracts. Setout doesn’t sell the contracts themselves; those come from their publishers.