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The purpose of this study is to identify the essential elements required for innovation in the construction industry. To this end, the authors assessed the innovation at three levels: the firm growth account level, the firm behaviour level and the level of the firm’s experts. The factors influencing innovation at each level were identified and synthesised into guiding strategies for innovation.

Three methods were combined to develop a mode of thinking for innovation. First, at the semi-macro level, the authors identified the factors that influence the total factor productivity (TFP) by regressing the TFP across firms of the construction industry on a variety of extrinsic factors. Second, at the firm level, the authors extracted actual innovative firms from a large amount of public procurement individual data. The authors analysed the behaviours of these innovative firms. Third, the authors conducted a survey of expert-level personnel. In addition, a text analysis was performed to determine what was perceived by experts as a factor that leads to innovation.

The authors analysed the TFP, the behaviour of innovative firms and the perception issues between industry experts and stakeholders regarding innovation. As a result, two factors were identified. The first factor was the expectation of a positive solution to the problem through monopoly profits, future benefits and increased efficiency. The second factor was peer pressure from other organisations of a similar nature, peer pressure from users and technical information, as well as competitive conditions, e.g. recent environmental growth, including relevant innovations.

In the context of innovation, static and dynamic thinking were important requirements. Static concepts were based on the accumulation of knowledge, such as patents and technological progress. Dynamic thinking involved a future outlook, including a competitive environment as a necessary condition. Actual technological innovation was driven by incentives and expectations.

According to the results of this study, the authors make the following recommendations for enhancing the construction-industry innovation in Japan: do not rely on a patent policy to drive innovation, create an environment that encourages competition and develop an ongoing initiative that encourages and rewards innovation.

This study was novel, in that the nature of innovation was investigated at three levels: the TFP, firm behaviour and expert perceptions. The identification and extraction of the two resulting points – statically necessary and dynamically necessary elements – was a significant contribution of the study.

The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between the geographic market size of businesses and the competitiveness of being able to bid at low prices.

The design of this study is based on a natural experiment approach. Firstly, after controlling for the firm size and other factors, the author sees that firms participating in bidding in a large region are more competitive to bid at lower prices than firms doing business in a smaller region. The author then tests for causality in a natural experiment of the exogenous event.

The results show that firms participating in the bidding process in a large area are more competitive to bid at lower prices than firms doing business in a small area. This is tested in a natural experiment, and the result is that they are more competitive because they do business in a larger area.

The practical implication is that, when aiming for competitiveness, it is most important to consider the nature of the business and to see the essence of the business, for example, that networks are important in the construction industry, and that doing business over a wide area is the way to become competitive.

The social implications are that to make firms more competitive, we must look at the characteristics of the industry and come up with policies that fit the reality, such as encouraging them to do business in a wide area.

The originality of this study is that this study viewed competitiveness as being able to bid low prices for public procurement and found that doing business in a wide area is competitive. Furthermore, the causal effect of the study was to test the fact that doing business in a wide area does not mean doing business in a wide area because it is competitive, but that doing business in a wide area creates a competitive advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to try to understand the relationship between price and quality in public procurement by using data on the quality of civil engineering works and prices in tenders. By doing so, it tries to conduct a comprehensive examination of the quality of construction works, which has been difficult to recognize and evaluate.

The methodology of this analysis is to collect data on the quality of construction works from the rankings of construction performance evaluations revealed by public procurement authorities. In addition, the prices of bids of the providers in public procurement are also collected from the available data and analyzed. The relationship between the two was statistically analyzed in an objective and verifiable way.

What the study found was that the price of the work measured by the bid rate had a positive and significant relationship with the quality of the work measured by the construction performance rating. Furthermore, the panel data were analyzed using panel data for 51 firms that all appeared in the construction performance evaluation for 12 years and participated in at least three bids in each year, and the first-order term of the bid rate was negative and the second-order term was positive and was 10% significant, which is a U-shaped relationship.

This study is one of the investigations focused on public procurement construction work. One of the limitations of this study is that it is a study of one industry in the Asian region. However, this study focuses on the incentives of business operators. As such, the analysis is applicable to all situations faced by those running businesses.

The managerial implications of this study include the following: although, improving the quality of construction results is costly, competitive firms are also steadily improving their quality as it is a factor of competition. However, there will come a point where their efforts come to a halt at a certain level. It is necessary to operate the business with this situation in mind. In addition to the company's efforts, it is necessary to lobby the government.

As a policy implication for this analysis, it was possible to evaluate that steady improvement in construction results was confirmed, but the correlation between the relaxation of the competition and the increase in the bid rate was correlated with the decrease in the total amount of public works. This highlights the problem of having to think about measures for the efficient use of the. In addition to this, the fact that the competition situation has been eased can be considered as a problem that it will adversely affect the innovation stimulation of operators, and that it will become necessary to pay more attention to competition limiting acts.

The uniqueness of this paper is firstly that unique data representing the quality of public procurement, which had been difficult to analyze, were collected, organized and used in the study. In addition, not only did we find a positive relationship between quality and price but we also found a U-shaped relationship between them using panel data.

In November 1999, the Japanese Fair Trade Commission took legal action against participants in bids for oil delivery work ordered by the Self-Defense Forces. Then, in September 2000, the Korean Fair Trade Commission took legal action against participants in bids for oil delivery work ordered by the Korean Ministry of National Defense. These actions were not related, though there are similarities between the cases, each of which involves oil delivery companies obtaining special procurement privileges through deals with national security authorities. Study of these cases led to speculation as why the industry is conductive to collusion. According to the study three important results were recognized: Several measures in the plan for Japanese and Korean procurement reform were then analyzed. The implementation can clarify issues that are important for eradicating the participantsyʼ incentives for collusion.

The purpose of this study is to propose a method for vulnerable pedestrians to visualize potential obstacles on sidewalks. In recent years, the number of vulnerable pedestrians has been increasing as Japanese society has aged. The number of wheelchair users is also expected to increase in the future. Currently, barrier-free maps and street-view applications can be used by wheelchair users to check possible routes and the surroundings of their destinations in advance. However, identifying physical barriers that pose a threat to vulnerable pedestrians en route is often difficult.

This study uses photogrammetry to create a digital twin of the three-dimensional (3D) geometry of the existing walking space by collecting photographic images taken on sidewalks. This approach allows for the creation of high-resolution digital elevation models of the entire physical sidewalk surface from which physical barriers such as local gradients and height differences can be detected by uniform image filtering. The method can be used with a Web-based data visualization tool in a geographical information system, permitting first-person views of the ground and accurate geolocation of the barriers on the map.

The findings of this study showed that capturing the road surface with a small wide-angle camera while walking is sufficient for recording subtle 3D undulations in the road surface. The method used for capturing data and the precision of the 3D restoration results are described.

The proposed approach demonstrates the significant benefits of creating a digital twin of walking space using photogrammetry as a cost-effective means of balancing the acquisition of 3D data that is sufficiently accurate to show the detailed geometric features needed to navigate a walking space safely. Further, the findings showed how information can be provided directly to users through two-dimensional (2D) and 3D Web-based visualizations.

This article analyzes the challenges of infectious disease control under a super-aged society through Japan’s experience with COVID-19.

This article provides an overview of Japan’s COVID-19 measures and their characteristics, discusses their successes and failures, and identifies future challenges.

Japan’s basic strategy for COVID-19 consists of three parts: the border defense (Stage 1), slowing down the spread (Stage 2), and damage control (Stage 3). One key policy feature in Stage 2 and Stage 3 is based on “voluntary restriction”. It had a certain effect, but it was prolonged with each recurring “wave of infection”, resulting in economic exhaustion and people’s dissatisfaction. Thus, the effect of the voluntary restriction has weakened, while the percentage of people who have been vaccinated is improving, making it difficult to predict the damage of the next “wave”. Under the hyper-aged society, it was necessary to identify and protect particularly vulnerable areas, i.e., psychiatry hospitals, chronic care hospitals, and long term care (LTC) facilities. On the other hand, secondary impacts extend to young people. The most serious one is the decrease in births which further accelerates the aging of society.

This study is original as it investigated why Japan’s unique countermeasures against COVID-19 without mandatory lockdown worked well for a considerable period. It also revealed that secondary impacts of the COVID-19 epidemic are broader and more significant than the direct loss of life, and that the social system, especially super-aged society with many vulnerable areas should be reformed in consideration of the threat of infectious diseases. Lessons from the Japanese case may contribute to other countries.

The purpose of this paper is to show production process developments and innovations that resolve many of the issues faced with certain process steps for printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing following “green” practices.

Several key PCB manufacturing processes have been developed or studied with respect to new environmental legislations and practises.

The introduction of new legislations designed to protect the environment require changes to laminate materials, solders, and PCB manufacturing techniques. The effect of new laminate materials on the desmearing and metallising processes have been assessed and recommendations given. The effect of increased thermal stress on plated copper has been assessed. Developments in adhesion enhancement for black oxide alternatives have been made and are presented with their suitability for the newer green laminate materials. The development of a new laminate manufacturing technique to reduce environmental impact is introduced. The capabilities of different surface finishes in relation to new lead‐free soldering techniques is investigated and presented.

This is a short paper covering several major PCB processing steps and covers experiences and development results.

The paper details how “green” PCB manufacturing affects some key processes, developments to improve results and environmentally friendlier innovations in laminate manufacturing techniques.