Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) embarked on an exercise to update frequently designed public assets in 2022. This included updating the standard designs for schools and current baseline construction cost estimates to benchmark the design and cost of schools in South Africa. A need was identified to consider variations of the existing prototype designs to respond to differing conditions relating to site conditions, location, and availability of services.

This study aims to balance legislative requirements, capital investment, operational costs, and environmental impacts by investigating construction practices, site variations, materials and technology that reduce carbon life-cycle costs and head towards net zero-carbon building solutions.   

To achieve the objectives, a basic toolkit has been developed to enable government officials, educators, architects, and others to quickly ascertain how many learners can be accommodated on selected sites in various configurations. The high-level cost of the school can then be determined at the early stages of project planning.

Detailed drawings, and several masterplans have also been developed to demonstrate how the toolkit can be used for various size schools on flat and steep site.