Japanese Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Keiichi Ishii announced that it will start integration of construction and ICT in the whole process of public works; land survey, engineering, construction and maintenance. Standards for ICT-introduced construction management and inspection will be established by March 2016 and will be adopted in public works to be procured in the next fiscal year. Taking advantages of such technologies as drones and auto-heavy machines, the ministry aims to increase productivity of trade workers by 50%.

Minister Ishii revealed the new program named “i-Construction,” saying that his office will be focusing on productivity improvement especially in earthwork and concrete placing. Workers in the two sectors, consisting 40% of all the trades, have lagged behind in productivity, while the other sectors successfully improved by ten times in 50 years. The ministry intends to dramatically enhance overall productivity of Japanese construction industry which remains 80% of that in the US. (2015/11/25)