June of the same year, the bridge was re-opened for service.

In addition to the seconding of staff, other support methods are being promoted to improve maintenance technology, such as conducting workshops and on-site training sessions for local government staff members regarding bridge maintenance.

## ☑ Prefectures Supporting Municipalities

In Nara Prefecture, they have implemented ‘Vertical Completion’ since FY2010, where municipalities outsource the inspections and development of repair plans for extending service life for bridges under their jurisdiction to the prefecture. This is an initiative to support municipalities that lack civil engineer staff, or have difficulty developing their own repair plan for extending service life. Specifically, the bridge inspections are done by the prefecture’s jurisdiction civil engineering office for municipalities that have requested prefectural support, and the prefecture’s road management division develop the repair plans for extending service life for each municipality, based on the prefecture’s own principles. This initiative makes it possible for municipalities to implement the preventative maintenance method to maintain, manage, and upgrade based on the plan, and also has the merit of resulting in greater cost reduction than if the municipalities had developed their own plans.

With the implementation of this vertical completion method, the bridge inspections for all municipalities within Nara prefecture was completed by the end of FY2012, and all plan developments for bridge service life extension were completed by FY2013 (Figure 2-3-39). Going forward, Nara prefecture is considering providing additional support to the municipalities when the municipalities begin in earnest with the repair work that is required based on the repair plan for extending service life. Nara prefecture has already been entrusted with one such repair work as a test case. For repair work, Nara is also considering having municipalities send one of their staff members to the prefectural office so that human resource development can happen at the same time, by going through the practice of quantity surveying and site management with the municipality staff as the construction work happens.

Meanwhile, in FY2013, following the same principle as the bridges, the full check inspection for tunnels—as part of

road stock—was also entrusted to the prefecture through vertical completion. The inspection work for 9 municipalities and 15 tunnels were done by the prefecture, showing that this initiative is spreading.

As evident from these initiatives, if entities with advanced technology and know-how provide and share these skills with other entities that are in need of help, this can result in those who manage infrastructures becoming interconnected, which can contribute to the improvement of standards for maintenance, management, and upgrading of social infrastructures throughout the whole nation.

## (Securing and Training Leaders in the Construction Industry)

As seen in chapter one, the number of people employed as engineers are continuing to decrease, which gives rise to the concern that there will be a lack of human resources that can take on the maintenance, management, and upgrading of social infrastructures. One of the reasons for this may be the significant reduction in construction investment, which has resulted in wage reduction for skilled workers. If we look at the trend in the recurring profit margin of the construction industry, we can see that in the first half of the 1990's the profitability of the construction industry was higher than the average of all industries combined. However, since the economic bubble burst, the declining trend has continued, and since the 2000's has remained at a low level in the 1% range. Since FY2011, it has started to recover due to the reconstruction demand, but still remains below the profit rate of the manufacturing industry and of all the industries combined (Figure 2-3-40).