90% of construction work is not finished on schedule…” Numerous “construction schedule postponements and unnatural reasons” for waterworks projects in Osaka City

The phrase “completion within the construction period” is no longer used

Aging water pipes are becoming increasingly serious.

According to media reports, 170,000 km of water pipes in Japan have exceeded their legal service life (40 years). This is a distance of about four times the circumference of the earth, and the risk of bursting is high in Japan, where earthquakes occur frequently. The renewal of water pipes is an urgent task, but there has been a series of bid-rigging scandals involving waterworks bids throughout the country. A reporter from a national newspaper’s society department explains.

Last year, a contractor won a bid for a waterworks project in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture, at exactly the same price, despite an error in the estimated cost. The employee who leaked the design price, the chief engineer of the Engineering Division of the Iwaki City Waterworks Bureau, was arrested for violating the Official Collusion Prevention Act, and the president and two directors of a local company that won the bid based on the leaked information were also caught in the line of duty. In May of this year, a top waterworks and sewage works manager in Onomichi City, Hiroshima Prefecture, was dismissed from his post on disciplinary grounds for leaking the estimated prices of waterworks projects ordered by the city to contractors.

As scandals involving the waterworks bureau came to light one after another, the writer received some information. The construction work ordered by the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau has been frequently postponed. A former employee of the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau confided, “The construction schedules of projects ordered by the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau are frequently postponed.

A former employee of the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau confided, “There have been a series of cases in which construction deadlines have not been met for projects ordered by the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau. Extensions of six months or a year are the norm. The contractors who fail to meet construction deadlines are supposed to be subject to penalties such as fines and suspension of bidding, but for some reason, there is no repercussion. It has become an anomaly that contractors who fail to meet construction deadlines are repeatedly being awarded construction contracts. The Osaka City Waterworks Bureau has lost the phrase “completion within the construction period. It is said that 60 to 70% of all construction projects are being extended.

The Waterworks Bureau does not normally allow the extension of construction periods due to factors other than natural disasters. Shintaro Domura, chairman of the Council on Global Environmental Issues, is outraged.

Shintaro Domura, chairman of the Council for Global Environmental Issues, is furious: “Even when we requested the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau to release the documents, they were reluctant to do so. So we filed a disclosure request with the Osaka Prefectural Police and obtained internal documents describing the postponement of the construction period.”

The documents he obtained were a “Statement of Reasons for Design Changes” (construction period) for a water pipe installation project in Tennoji Ward, Osaka City (construction period: July 4, Reiwa 2023 to September 30, Reiwa 2023). The “Reason” for the successful bidder to postpone the construction period was stated in the “Statement of Reasons for Design Change.

《It took time to discuss with the police in obtaining the road use permit, and the acquisition of the permit was delayed. (4 months).
The start of construction was delayed because it took time to explain the construction to the local town council. (1 month)
While the pipe installation work was in progress, a complaint was received from the local community and the work was temporarily halted. Negotiations with the local community resulted in the resumption of construction, but the negotiations took time and delayed the progress of the work. （However, these negotiations took time and delayed the progress of the construction work (3 months).

However, when he confirmed these facts, “everything turned out to be false.

When he went to the Tennoji Police Station Traffic Division and asked the chief of the Traffic Division if it had taken time to discuss the matter with the police, he was told that this was not the case. We also met with the head of the local town council to see if there had been any “complaints from the local community,” but this was also false. When we brought the evidence to the water department officials and questioned them, they just clammed up and refused to answer. They refused to even give us an answer.

The construction period for this water pipe work was extended by 244 days from the original schedule. A contractor involved in the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau’s construction condemns this unjustified postponement.

Normally, the contractor would apply for a road use permit at the local police station at the time of signing the contract with the Waterworks Bureau. It takes about a month to obtain the permit. It is rare to receive complaints from local residents, but in my experience, most of these complaints are settled within a few days. I have never heard of residents objecting for months.”

Reason for frequent construction schedule delays

Mr. Domura also obtained from the Osaka Prefectural Police a document containing the “details of discussions” between a person in charge of the Waterworks Bureau and a person in charge of the police station in charge of the installation of water pipes in Tennoji Ward. The documents also did not contain any communication to support the claim that “it took a long time to discuss the matter with the police.

The reason why construction schedules are frequently postponed is that construction work is concentrated on a particular contractor and the workload exceeds the allowable limit. When the city places an order for construction work, the Contract Administration Division sends a notice to the contractors, but those who have projects with imminent construction deadlines are not allowed to bid. So, they postpone the construction schedule before bidding, and make it look like they have the capacity to take on new work. The Waterworks Bureau officials are aware of this practice, and yet they tolerate it, which is sinful.

Why have construction schedules been postponed so frequently? What should we make of Mr. Domura’s testimony that the items listed in the “Statement of Reasons for Design Changes” are “false”? When we asked the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau, they responded as follows.

The assistant supervisor, after inspecting and discussing the site with the contractor, prepared a draft traffic handling plan (a drawing showing traffic regulations and safety measures around the road to be used, which is required for road use permit applications), taking into consideration the road excavation and traffic conditions, and asked the competent police station to confirm the plan in advance. However, the police station gave us instructions to revise the traffic control plan and the detour route, so we had to go through the process of revising the traffic control plan and reconfirming with the police station several times until we received a response that there were no problems.

Since the road use permit application is submitted only after receiving final confirmation from the police station that there are no problems, it does not take much time to receive the permit from the police station. In fact, it took about four months to obtain a road use permit, including the time required for the preliminary confirmation of the traffic control plan and the response to the revised instructions, as stated in the reason for the design change.

Regarding the repeated postponements of the construction period, the company responded as follows: ” The percentage of construction period postponements in the water pipeline projects ordered in Reiwa and Reiwa 2022 is approximately 90%.

The contract stipulates that “If the construction work cannot be completed within the construction period for reasons not attributable to the contractor, the contractor may request in writing that the construction period be extended or changed, specifying the reasons for the extension or change. The postponement of the construction period in Reiwa 2021 and 2022 was carried out in accordance with this provision, and therefore, no penalty was imposed.

Regarding the suggestion that construction orders may be biased toward certain contractors, he denied the allegation , saying, “There is no bias toward winning bids from specific contractors.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that construction schedules have been postponed for many projects ordered by the city. Shouldn’t the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau fulfill its responsibility to explain this issue to the citizens?