(6) Supporting human resources to undertake maintenance, management, etc.

To ensure the proper practice of the work of maintaining, managing and upgrading social infrastructures, securing the right human resources to undertake inspection, repair and other on-site jobs and enhancing their technical capabilities would be essential. From a viewpoint of sustaining and inheriting the technical capabilities of local contractors, the Ministry has started studying and implementing measures aimed at restructuring the existing scheme of tendering and contracting, such as placing blanket orders covering multiple projects in a single deal each and encouraging the use of multi-year contracting.

The Ministry also encourages the development of an environment in which social infrastructures can be maintained, managed and upgraded in a more precise fashion through the use of local partnerships and PPP/PFI concepts, in its effort to drive public-private collaborations in their maintenance, management, upgrade and so on.

## (7) Developing an integrated scheme of state management, and legislation, etc

In March 2013, the Office for Promoting Measures Against Aging Social Capital was set up in the MLIT to move ahead with cross-sectional efforts to measure the impact ofPsi on the social capital. The proposed approach would include a series of measures to address the challenges of social capital development.

In addition, relevant amendments were made to the Road Law, River Law, Port and Harbor Law and more in the same year to address certain issues, such as expressly defining their criteria on maintenance and management, such as inspections.

## (8) Promoting infrastructure service life extension planning

Prioritized support is being extended to local governments, etc. lagging in their formulation of infrastructure service life extension plans by newly including seacoast maintenance, dam, sedimentation control and other facilities in the scope of disaster preparedness and safety subsidization, etc. and stretching the period to qualify for such subsidization, etc. for river and park facilities.

The MLIT formed the Social Capital Maintenance Strategy Subcommittee under the Infrastructure Development Council and the Transport Policy Council in July 2012 to proceed with inquiries and discussions, which came up with a recommendation titled “Future Concepts of Maintenance, Management and Upgrade Social Capital” in December 2013. The recommendation suggests prioritized measures to be taken by the MLIT, local governments, etc. Pursuant to this recommendation, the Subcommittee will proceed to probe steps to put these measures into action, such as launching qualification systems on inspections and diagnostics, forming associations of specialists and building a new framework of maintenance activity surpassing the administrative boundaries of smaller municipalities.

## (2) Developing efforts targeting infrastructures of every kind and carrying them forward through the future

The Infrastructure Service Life Extension Master Plan (hereinafter the “Master Plan”) was compiled at a meeting of the Liaison Conference among Ministers and Agencies Concerned with the Promotion of Measures Aimed at Combating Aging Infrastructures in November 2013 to disseminate such efforts across the government and further to local governments, private business operators and more working on infrastructures of any kind.

The concept of the Master Plan is to keep the PDCA cycle for maintenance activity running consistently, or taking the right action positively at the right timing to suit the results of inspections and diagnostics carried out at one instance and keeping a record of the facility conditions, logs of the actions taken and so on to aid in the implementation of inspections and diagnostics at the next. Pursuing this effort would help make the infrastructures longer-lived and avoid large-scale repairs and renewals to the extent possible, which could not only trim the total costs that may be incurred for the implementation of mid- and long-term maintenance, management, upgrade and other activities and level the budgets, but open up new markets relevant to the efforts made in the meantime, such as inspections, diagnostics, repairs and upgrades, in an evolving segment of growth technology.

While the Master Plan identifies the measures relevant to these concepts, it encourages the managers, etc. of infrastructures located in every part of the nation to prepare infrastructure service life extension plans (action plans) to pursue positive implementation of these measures.

After following up “Near-Term Actions to be Taken to Maintain, Manage and Upgrade Social Capital” at the May 21, 2014 meeting of the Council on Measures to Combat Aging Infrastructures, the MLIT has just come up with its action