The Four Parts of a Reference
- The standard. SANS 10400 or SANS 2001 — which of the two documents this is.
- The part. The letter or code after the dash: H, K, CM1. Each part is its own separately published document.
- The clause. The numbered paragraph inside that part: 4.2.1. Numbering is hierarchical, so 4.2.1 sits inside 4.2, which sits inside 4.
- The kind of passage. A clause, a table, a figure or a definition. They are numbered in separate sequences, so “table 1” and “clause 1” are different places.
SANS 10400: the Lettered Parts
SANS 10400 is the code of practice for applying the National Building Regulations, and it says what a building has to achieve. Its parts are lettered, and the letters are the ones you meet most often in a question: H foundations, J floors, K walls, L roofs, M stairways, P drainage.
SANS 2001: the Coded Parts
SANS 2001 is the construction works standard, and it says how work is specified and carried out. Its parts carry two- or three-character codes: CC1 and CC2 for structural and minor concrete, CM1 for masonry walling, DP6 for water pipes, EM1 for plastering.
The split is worth holding on to, because it decides which document answers a question. Anything phrased as a requirement the finished building must meet is usually SANS 10400. Anything about how the work is done, in what order, to what tolerance, is usually SANS 2001. The eight areas and the parts behind each are set out in what the test covers.
Finding the Passage
Open the part named, not the whole manual. Go to the contents page and find the top-level clause first — the 4 in 4.2.1 — then walk down. The numbering is doing the work of an index, which is why references are written this way rather than as page numbers: pages move between printings and clause numbers do not.
When a reference names a table or a figure, the surrounding clause is still worth reading. A table almost never stands on its own: the clause above it says which cases it applies to, and that condition is what most questions about a table are actually testing.
Read the Scope Before You Trust the Answer
Every part opens with a scope clause and a definitions clause, and both change what the rest means. A requirement may apply only to a category of building, only above or below a size, or only where a competent person has not designed something instead. A perfectly correct sentence quoted out of its scope is the most common way to get a question wrong while reading the right document.
Editions and Amendments
Standards are revised. A part carries an edition and a date, and amendments are published against it, so two copies of “SANS 10400-K” may not say the same thing. Check the edition on the cover of whatever you are reading, and prefer the copy the NHBRC issued you over one found loose on the internet.
The standards are published and sold by the South African Bureau of Standards, which is where an authorised copy comes from. We do not reproduce clause text on this site — our questions cite the passage and explain the reasoning, and you read the passage in your own copy.
A Worked Lookup
Take a reference of the form SANS 10400-H, clause 4.2.1. The document is the code of practice; the part is H, foundations; the passage is the first sub-clause of 4.2. Open part H, find clause 4, read 4.2, then 4.2.1 — and read the clause above it too, because that is where the condition usually sits.
Do that once per wrong answer and the references stop being decoration. It is also the habit that makes an open-book paper worth anything: on the day, what you are being tested on is partly whether you can find things. The four steps per question put this in a routine.