Education System for Japanese Construction Site Engineers in Quality Management

In Japan, over the last 50 years, quality management of construction projects has come to involve many important issues. Moreover, it is now emphasized in all area of manufacturing. However, it may prove difficult or impossible to assure satisfactory quality, relying only upon laws and regulations concerned with quality measurement. In practical terms, construction projects involve a complex interplay of material and human resources in order to complete projects. The wide variety of construction site engineers have expert knowledge and experience as concerns their work. Thus, it is necessary to teach the fundamentals of site work and techniques as well as safety rules, in order to achieve high quality by performing their work accurately. But the education system for site engineers in Japan has been changed several times over past decades taking in to account social and economic movements, and technical evolutions. This paper introduces the historical variation of the education system for site engineers in Japan as compared with issues and responses, such as historical construction accidents, revised regulations, and the changing education system for site engineers from the 1960s to the present.