Shortage of Construction Engineers to Train Young Professionals
Right now, small and micro construction companies lack engineers who can train their younger staff.
No—to be precise, there are very few engineers who can teach the “Four Major Management Practices” or who are actually capable of implementing them.
Anyone who has obtained a Level 1 or Level 2 Construction Management Engineer certification probably understands that the “Four Major Areas of Management” primarily refer to schedule management, quality management, safety management, and cost management. When it comes to all four of these areas of management, even among construction management engineers actually working on-site, there are probably very few who can confidently say, “I can do this!” In particular, there aren’t that many engineers who are proficient in cost management.
You often see people at job interviews who confidently declare, “I can do government-style cost estimation!” but when they actually start working, they consistently produce disappointing results. This is because they fail to distinguish between the actual construction budget and government-style cost estimation. The actual construction budget is a plan and estimate based on the actual construction work. In contrast, government-style cost estimation refers to whether the designer used specific labor rates in the design.
The inability to perform official cost estimates means that “we don’t understand the design philosophy = we can’t determine whether the actual construction costs are appropriate.” In other words, we don’t know where the problem lies, so even though we worked hard, the result ends up being work we had to pay for out of pocket, and our efforts go unrecognized.
Tight Budgets and the Drawbacks of a Two-Day Weekend
Among small and micro construction firms, the “one person per job site” model is the norm. This is certainly true for projects costing around 100 million yen or less.
This is a problem that any engineer who takes full responsibility for managing the actual budget is bound to face: it’s fairly common for their own expenses (salary) to put a strain on the construction budget.
This is because the concept of overhead costs is based solely on a percentage of direct construction costs and does not take the number of construction days into account. Furthermore, with the recent push toward a two-day weekend system, it has become more difficult to shorten construction schedules, which may leave no time for training.
I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding: both the two-day weekend system and the reduction of overtime are important issues, and I myself am in favor of them. However, I believe the two-day weekend system can be dramatically improved through measures such as the annual leveling of construction workloads, and introducing it in the current situation—where such measures have not yet been implemented—could actually lead to a deterioration in terms of training for young employees.
The level of the client is similarly low
The current reality is that young engineers at small and micro-sized construction firms are often put in charge of construction sites despite having very limited technical skills. However, the same is true for clients as well.
I’ve even encountered supervisors who didn’t understand the relevant laws and regulations, hadn’t studied construction management standards, or weren’t even familiar with the Construction Industry Act itself.
Because they don’t know, they can’t explain it to their superiors; and even though they can’t explain it, they don’t want to take responsibility. In my experience, their responses are almost always the same: “That’s how it’s always been done…,” “Just like in previous cases…,” or “Because another construction site did it that way first….”
However, unless we’re talking about a long-term public works project divided into Phase 1, Phase 2, and so on, it’s impossible for projects with different locations and conditions to have exactly the same justifications as a precedent. Moreover, from a contractor’s perspective, it’s—to put it bluntly—irrelevant why other construction sites use certain methods or prepare certain documents. Or rather, such connections should not be made.
Even when there’s a problem on-site and we prepare documentation to explain it to the supervisor, they won’t approve it—citing the standard line that “mere possibility isn’t enough”—because we haven’t done enough research. Then, if a problem arises later on, work on-site gets halted, and we end up working overtime with question marks hanging over our heads, drafting change orders and corrective action plans.
What makes it particularly troublesome is that these supervisors are never acting intentionally. Because that’s how they were taught and that’s how they’ve always done things, they don’t even realize that their behavior is problematic—which makes it all the more insidious.
However, let me say it again: the reverse is also true.
Construction management practices are different now than they used to be.
From a practical standpoint, the biggest obstacle to training young employees is probably the fact that “things aren’t what they used to be.”
The job of a construction site supervisor has changed from what it used to be; it now requires skills in both on-site work and office work. For this reason, streamlining paperwork is a frequent topic of discussion.
However, as mentioned above—whether it’s supervisors trying to protect themselves or additional documentation required for design changes—it feels as though the paperwork is increasing rather than being streamlined. Furthermore, as digitization advances, various guidelines are being introduced, and the amount of information we need to learn and verify each year just keeps growing.
Consequently, we have entered an era where the ability to efficiently handle desk work is a key competency for engineers and also helps reduce fatigue. Recently, thanks to various construction management software programs and integration with ICT, documents that used to take a full day to prepare can now be completed in half a day. Furthermore, the use of software and tablets linked to daily reports has become more widespread, and compatibility among these software programs has improved significantly.
But overtime isn't going down. Why is that?
Quite simply, it’s because they “don’t use” these new technologies. People who don’t use them make excuses like “it’s too difficult,” but this is a misconception—they’re just not used to it. It’s the same as when I first started using CAD and felt that drawing by hand was faster. Or when I used CAD software from another vendor, or when I used CAD software I hadn’t touched in a while. Once they get used to digital tools, new graduate engineers may even be able to complete tasks faster than veteran engineers. In fact, there are young engineers who have mastered the software to the point where they don’t need to work overtime.
However, veteran engineers—who lack any concept of using the latest technology to begin with—often fail to inform junior engineers of the software’s existence, or refuse to acknowledge any methods other than their own.
Of course, there are as many management methods as there are engineers—ten engineers, ten methods—and some aspects are likely determined by company policy, but companies that have adopted the latest technologies should use them, as this is becoming essential for the development of young engineers.
