In a survey conducted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism focusing on the private construction sector and interviewing more than 1,000 construction companies about the status of construction schedule and leave, the companies responded that the overtime of engineers directly working exceeded the special provisions of the upper limit. 17.2% of the companies did so. Although the response was made on January 1, before the limit was implemented, it shows that construction companies across the country, mainly main contractors, are making efforts to reform the way workers work on site. On the other hand, there are more cases than before when contractors' requests are accepted when making construction schedules, and the proportion of workers taking two days off per week is also increasing, indicating a trend toward improving the working environment.
The results of the FY2023 “Survey on Promoting Work Style Reform through Appropriate Construction Progress, etc.” have been released. The survey has been conducted annually since FY2021. This time, 1,302 companies responded to the actual status of private construction projects they have undertaken since December 2022.
As a new question, we asked about the actual situation where field workers exceeded the prescribed limit. 35.8% of companies had engineers working more than 45 hours/month and 360 hours/year according to the upper limit. Of these, 48.0% of companies had engineers working under special regulations such as 720 hours/year, accounting for 17.2% of the total.
In this survey, responses came mainly from companies that were main contractors, but we also asked about the situation of directly employed skilled workers. 12.0% of enterprises had skilled workers exceeding the upper limit specified in the principle. Of these, 39.4% of enterprises had skilled workers exceeding the special limit, accounting for 4.7% of the total.
The proportion of field workers taking an average of ``8 days off per week'' or more doubled over the past year. For engineers, the rate was 11.7% in FY 2022 and 21.2% in FY 2023, and for technicians, the rate was 11.0% in FY 2022 and 25.8% in FY 2023. The most common answer for both engineers and technicians was still “6 days off in 4 weeks,” but “7 days off in 4 weeks” was also increasing for both, and there was a general trend of improvement in securing days off.
When setting up a construction schedule at the time of initial contract signing, 63.3% of respondents in FY2013 said that ``we often (or often) do not discuss with the client and accept the contractor's request.'' This proportion is increasing. By comparison, the proportion of respondents who said ``I often do not receive a response even when I ask for advice'' has halved from 12.5% in FY2011 to 6.6% in FY2023. Although there are still many cases of workers making up for shortages by working on holidays, starting early or working overtime, the number of companies that are making efforts to improve work efficiency is increasing every year. ``Process streamlining'' was 34.4%, up 6.8 points from the previous year, and ``changing construction methods'' was 22.4%, up 4.0 points.
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