An assessment of the advancement of small to large civil engineering contractors

South Africa is confronted with a relatively high number of small sized contractors and a limited number of large well established construction companies. The lack of advancement, from small to large construction companies, is detrimental to the countries (and African) development. This development extends into a negative impact on various economic, social and political levels. This research focuses on identifying the problems relating to the lack of contractor development and provides practical research elucidations towards resolving the challenges. Sustaining growth and development of small contractors (in South Africa) will promote the construction industry and enhance the economic development of South Africa and Africa. The current monopolisation which has been ineffective, from large companies will be reduced and transformation in the sector will increase promoting competiveness, reducing poverty and unemployment. The research proposes a detailed analysis of the Construction sector in emerging economies, specifically South Africa (particularly the province of KwaZulu-Natal). The research proposes a novel association based evaluation methodology, facilitating problem analysis resulting in key data navigating the researchers towards forwarding potential problem resolution. The research is directed, with a detailed historic data analysis, providing data on development opportunities in the sector. The analysis technique is applied to multiple construction dependent partners. The research assimilates the research data found in literature and applies learnings to analyse current contractor development. The resulting data analysis exposes further data benefiting the industry. The research corroborates that the lack of development results from several contributing factors and does not consist of a single independent constraint. The study focuses on addressing all of these aspects and aims at providing a solution to the deficiency of contractor development.