policies define a broad package of measures to be taken to assure the quality of public works constructed and maintain public works bearers, such as establishing qualification systems for setting and surveying proper unit prices for construction design work and assuring design quality, formulating national operational guidelines and extending support to local public entities, as well as the issues to be approached by purchasers, such as setting fair predetermined prices, leveling construction timings by setting fair construction periods and marginal periods and introducing and using varied tendering and contracting options. The rationalization guidelines call for thorough utilization of low bid price survey programs, etc. by declaring that the act of deduction from the designed amounts calculated by fair costing is a breach of the Quality Assurance Act and also specifying what actions should be taken by purchasers to rationalize the bidding and tendering process, such as eliminating contractors that do not subscribe to a social insurance or any other appropriate program.

## (2) Approaches to fulfilling purchasers' liabilities

To abide by the principles of the Quality Assurance Act, it is essential for all purchasers of public works, including prefectural and municipal authorities, to practice their ordering paperwork properly to fulfill their liabilities. The state worked out “Guidelines for the Practice of Ordering Paperwork (Operational Guidelines) in January 2015 pursuant to the Quality Assurance Act, Article 22 to this end. The Operational Guidelines serve as a common manual for all purchasers of public works to follow and summarize an organized plan of acvity for the issues to be tackled in the sequential stages of ordering paperwork, i.e., survey and design, preparation for ordering construction projects, tendering and contracting, construction and completion, and varied tendering and contracting options available. Individual purchasers are supposed to proceed with their specific approaches pursuant to these guidelines.

To bolster the practical usefulness of the Operational Guidelines, the MLIT will provide relevant support and collaboration to local public entities, etc. by way of Regional Purchasers Conferences, Regional Public-Works Project Liaison Conferences and so on and also promote responses to the issues of common concern to purchasers in a more intensified alliance of purchasers. The MLIT also plans to periodically examine to see if the purchasers conduct ordering paperwork properly in compliance with these guidelines and compile and release findings of such examinations.

## (3) Review of varied tendering and contracting options, etc

New additions to the Quality Assurance Act include the selection and utilization of varied tendering and contracting options (Article 14), phased screening (Article 16), technical proposal and bargaining methods (Article 18) and methods that make for maintenance and management of regional social infrastructures (multi-year contracting, packaged contracting, joint order-taking (Article 20)). The MLIT has worked to explore recommended sequences of processes, from planning of the development of social infrastructures to their engineering, construction and management, from purchasers' viewpoints and responses to various issues occurring since November 2013 at the “Conference on How Future Construction Production and Management Systems Should Be to Fulfill Purchasers’ Liabilities” and compiled the ways purchasers should choose tendering and contracting methods to suit specific project characteristics as “Guidelines for Applying Tendering and Contracting Methods to the Implementation of Public-Works Projects.”

## (4) Approaches to assuring quality in the construction stage

Other ongoing efforts include the promotion of information sharing between contractor and contractee to assure the quality of work objects, and the trial practice of “in-process checkups,” which verify the status, etc. of construction works across the flow of construction processes, and “quality certifications by third parties under contract from the builders.”