2024. 4. 2

Japan Society of Civil Engineers
International Activities Center

IAC News No.138
The IAC News introduces significant and unique international projects, technologies, symposium,communication undertaken by JSCE IAC, International Section, ACECC, and Research & Development
Section with over 30 committees, state-of-art- civil engineering technologies and projects, greatand interesting achievements of civil engineer and researcher once a month.
This month’s issue features the visiting lecture at Kyushu University, which is one of the main
activities of the IAC Professional Development and Education Program Group. That group started
the visiting lecture at Hokkaido University, Shibaura Institute of Technology, and Kyoto University,and then this year Kyushu University. That group has sent professional civil engineers and consultants
as lectures who has extensive experience with overseas projects. FY2022 JSCE President Project
has entered the 2nd phase: “the Subcomittee for Making Civil Engineers More Internationally-Minded
looks back on its activities in the 1st year and has determind to develop them. Another is a reportabout the efforts of JICA. The JICA has released the JICA Global Agenda, comprising 20-issue
strategies the development strategies and been implementing those strategies by setting up 5clusters: one of them is Transportation Safety Cluster. This cluster participated in Asia Pacific Road
Safety Observatory (APRSO) 2023.
We are happy to receive your comments, feedback, and requests anytime. Thank you

Visiting Lecture at Kyushu University
Since 2019, the JSCE International Activities Center(IAC), Professional Development and Education
Program Group have been using a lecture slot atuniversities and so forth to provide a visiting lecture
to inform young people, the bearers of Japan’s future,
about the significance of our overseas projects andhow we undertake work abroad.
Thevisiting

lectureintroduced

internationalorganizations as well as work at consultancy firms
and general contractors overseas. Then, through a
Q&A session with the lecturer, attendees gained a

Civil Engineering and Society Seminar at Kyushu
University

deeper understanding of project management
abroad.
This year, which marked the fifth year since the initiative began, visiting lectures were conducted at Kyoto
University, the Shibaura Institute of Technology, and Hokkaido University. In January 19, 2024, Dr. Shu
Takahashi (General Manager of the HR Planning Department at Nippon Koei Business Partners Co., Ltd.) gave
a visiting lecture to approximately 80 second-year students at the Kyushu University Faculty of Engineering byusing a lecture slot generously offered by Associate Professor Yasuyuki Maruya for the Civil Engineering and1

Society Seminar.
On the theme of young engineers forging a career as construction consultants, this lecture focused on young
civil engineering consultants working overseas. The lecture introduced the following topics:(1) What makes a promising engineer and forging a career as an engineer: This topic covered theskills and qualities needed as a construction consultant and how to go about establishing a career as one.
The VSOP (Vision, Strategy Setting, Objective Sharing, and Passion) model was also discussed.
(2) Career as an engineer and Japan’s Professional Engineer certification: This topic covered
growing as an engineer and gaining certification as a professional engineer.
(3) On-the-job (OJT) and Off-the-Job Training (Off-JT): This topic covered the importance of onthe-job training and off-the-job training. A training program aimed to improve the career awareness andskills of young engineers to support their growth was discussed.
(4) Civil engineering consultant jobs in international cooperation: This topic discussed that
construction consultant is a sought after role in overseas projects and international cooperation efforts.
This section also covered ODA projects, social infrastructure establishment, the Design-Bid-Builddelivery method, and projects of tangible and intangible assets.
(5) Anecdotes on leveling up skills and career as a civil engineering consultant: This topic gave
examples of success stories and tips on how to climb the ladder as a civil engineering consultant.
There were lots of questions from the students about what one enjoyed most about being involved in overseas
projects and what makes being a civil engineering consultant a satisfying job. Meanwhile, there were alsoquestions about what Japan’s Professional Engineer qualification means in the rest of the world, as well as theworking environment of a civil engineering consultant. These questions could possibly indicate that although
the students understood the efforts and motivation of a civil engineering consultant position overseas, there areconcerns over the working environment. Consequently, I feel that in order to make being a civil engineering
consultant an appealing occupation and industry foryoung engineers to pursue as a career path, it isnecessary to promote the importance and potential ofparticipation in overseas construction projects andinternational cooperation projects, as well as takefurther steps in terms of workstyle reform efforts.
The JSCE International Activities Center plans to
expand its reach to work with even more universities
and colleges going forward to deliver visiting
lectures.
Visiting Lecture by Dr. Shu Takahashi【Reported by Professional Development and Education Program Group, IAC 】

2The Ongoing Efforts of the Subcommittee for Making Civil
Engineers More Internationally-Minded
The Subcommittee for Making Civil Engineers More Internationally-Minded, which wasestablished as part of the JSCE president project in fiscal 2022, moved under the umbrellaof the International Activities Center in fiscal 2023 and continues to undertake efforts.
Tackling the long-standing challenge of developing human resources who can succeed on
the global stage, the subcommittee is a forum for members to motivate each other andengage in concrete activities in pursuit of making inroads for overseas expansion.
The most important part of what we do as a subcommittee is the “Making” aspect, as
highlighted by the name. That is, not just stopping at identifying challenges by
researching past case studies and drawing up solutions, but going beyond that by taking
concrete action. This process is just like a civil engineering project in the sense that when

Keitaro Konuma(Chairperson ofSubcommittee for
Making Civil
Engineers MoreInternationallyMinded)moving from the survey and design phase to the construction phase, sometimes
unexpected situations occur that were not initially foreseen, and the project team has to overcome thesesituations in order to complete the construction. Furthermore, with the subcommittee’s goal of making civilengineers “More Internationally-Minded,” in a broad sense, it feels like we are engaged in project managementin pursuit of achieving this objective.
During Fiscal Year 2023, we engaged in a wide variety ofactivities, including holding a symposium that focused on the
deployment of overseas projects and passing on engineeringexpertise to future generations, dispatching a research team tointernational conferences, introducing maintenance technologies
to visiting research teams of JICA collaborative engineering
projects, undertaking mock applications for PPP solar power
projects publicly announced overseas, and networking withoverseas subcommittees. These activities did not remainunchanged as they were planned at the outset, but were modified

Civil Engineering Globalization General
Committee Discussion "Globalization
Initiatives in the Civil Engineering
Industry"or conceived from scratch. As the chairperson, I enjoyed thisunexpected nature of what we do. I wonder what we will create this year? I hope that as many people as possible
will join this intense and enjoyable group, and use the group to gain experience and contacts that will prove
useful in the future. Naturally, we will keep pushing forward with our efforts.
We are always looking for new members, so if you are interested, please take a look at our subcommittee
webpage and apply.
In January 2024, we held an event in which we reported on the activities we undertook during fiscal 2022. A
video of this is available on YouTube, so please check it out.

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・Subcommittee webpage: https://committees.jsce.or.jp/kokusai14/node/7.
・JSCEtv: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3RrkQAfh5U .

【Reported by Keitaro Konuma (Chairperson of Subcommittee for Making Civil Engineers MoreInternationally-Minded, International Activities Center, Pacific Consultants Co., Ltd.)】

Participation in Asia Pacific Road Safety Observatory (APRSO) 2023
Annual Meeting
Based on its Transportation Global Agenda1 in 2021, JICA set up a Road Transportation
Safety Cluster to primarily support efforts to ensure safe roads, road safety education, andtake measures against road accidents in developing countries. Currently, experts have been
dispatched to Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan. In the Knowledge CoCreation Program (KCCP) for road safety, over 80 trainees from 33 countries have taken
lectures and participated in field trips to learn from Japan, a country that has overcome
circumstances that once saw it suffer a high number of deaths from traffic accidents. In
the past, a team of volunteers was also dispatched to Nepal provide ongoing support.
The Asia-Pacific Road Safety Observatory (APRSO)2

Ryuhei Kondo(JICA)

2023 annual meeting3 was held in Manila, thePhilippines, across three days from Tuesday, December 5 to Thursday, December 7, 2023. JICA participated in
the event for the first time in order to introduce its efforts in the area of road safety through a panel discussion,collect information on road safety trends around the world, and to build a network with other organizations.
APRSO is a regional forum set up in 2021 by organizations such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) andWorld Bank (WB) to assist efforts to reduce the number of road accidents in Asia-Pacific countries. This was
the third annual APRSO meeting, with approximately 230 attendees from over 50 countries. The audience
mainly consisted of personnel from government ministries responsible for road safety in APRSO member
countries. There were also attendees from international aid organizations and agencies (including NGOs),
academic institutions, and private enterprises, with lots of visitors from India and Bangladesh.
The annual meeting focused on the themes of reducing
speeding, bicycle accidents, and the number of fatalities ofyoung individuals4. I learned that each participating country
has a strong interest in the United Nation’s Sustainable
Development Goal 3.6, which is to halve the number ofglobal deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents by2030. JICA also introduced its road safety initiatives, withAPRSO 2023 proving to be a great opportunity to share
information with a wide audience. Through the presentations
at the annual meeting, it reaffirmed my belief that reducing

Panel Discussion

road traffic fatalities, especially in developing countries, isseen as a pressing issue and that there are high hopes for assistance in the field of road safety.

4The likes of anti-lock braking systems (ABS) were introduced as the latest technologies, and although some of
the technologies have already been made compulsory in Japan and there were no groundbreaking technologies
on show, there were innovative initiatives in collecting accident data and so on using probe data* , smartphone,and satellite image analysis. During a workshop, the introduction of musical roads (an audible rumbling
generated when a vehicle drives over grooves in the road) as a means of curbing speeding in Japan drew greatinterest from the moderator and audience.
JICA will continue to provide support in the road safety field in developing countries. Thank you for yourcontinued support and cooperation!
*probe data: the data generated by monitoring the position of individual vehicles over space and time.
1

https://www.jica.go.jp/activities/issues/transport/index.html

2

https://www.aprso.org/

3

https://adb.eventsair.com/aprsomeeting-roadsafetyevent/

4Road accidents are the number one cause of death among five to 29-year-olds, exceeding those of tuberculosis and diarrhea. WHO, Global status

report on road safety 2023

APRSO Participants【Reported by Ryuhei Kondo, Japan International Cooperation Agency】

Updates◆In response to 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake
https://www.jsce-int.org/node/873◆The International Infrastructure Archives– A Compilation of Japan’s Greatest Projects in Transfer of Civil Engineering Technology in Service –http://www.jsce.or.jp/e/archive/◆Infrastructure System Resilience: An Engineering Framework forAssessment, Management, and Governancehttps://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/9780784485088

5◆6th JSCE Concrete Committee Webinar "Frontiers of Concrete Technology"
https://www.jsce-int.org/node/879◆IAC “News Pick Up!!” on the JSCE Japanese website
https://committees.jsce.or.jp/kokusai/iac_dayori_2024◆【YouTube】 Civil Engineering, in Your own Words (Full ver.)https://youtu.be/r1Dc37kABXM?feature=shared◆The English Summary Edition of JSCE Standard Specifications for Concrete Structures
https://www.jsce.or.jp/committee/concrete/e/web/pdf/Summary_edition_20240227.pdf◆Summary of featured articles in JSCE Magazine Vol. 109, No.4, April 2024
http://www.jsce-int.org/pub/magazine◆Journal of JSCE
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/journalofjsce◆Safe and Healthy Work in the Digital Age 2023-2025 Campaign
https://healthy-workplaces.osha.europa.eu/en/media-centre/events/launch-ceremony-healthy-workplacescampaign-safe-and-healthy-work-digital-age-2023-2025◆【YouTube】 Taiwan Public Infrastructure Archives: Public Water Supply Series
https://youtu.be/mMMvODevd_Q?feature=shared◆ACECC Future Leaders：https://aceccfutureleaders.org/◆CECAR10：http://www.cecar10.org/◆The 12th East Asian Dam Conference (EADC)︓https://confit.atlas.jp/guide/event/eadc2024/top◆The 10th World Water Forum︓https://worldwaterforum.org/§ IAC News Subscription §The IAC News is one of the communication tools to share information and ideas with the members. We would like to invite
you, your friends and colleagues to join the communication and to subscribe the IAC News. Please register online:(http://www.jsce-int.org/node/150). We look forward to meeting you.
§ IAC Facebook §Recent activity of International Activities Center is introduced on this Facebook. Please see this home page(https://www.facebook.com/JSCE.en).
Comments and Questions
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JSCE IAC: iac-news@ jsce.or.jp

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