Issue Focus

The recent outbreak of Covid 19 accelerates the transition to a non-face-to-face society.This non-face-to-face society has coined the term "Untact" and is accelerating environmental changes. Covid 19 facilitates OSC in the construction industry, and the paradigm of training construction workers requires change. Despite the external growth of the construction industry, the treatment of construction workers has been poor. As a result, support for training skilled personnel was not actively carried out. Until now, training construction workers has been done in terms of increasing quantitative manpower centered on suppliers. Specifically, it has characteristics such as ① network-oriented entry into the field, ② acquisition of non-standardized functions, ③ lack of job security due to non-regular employment, and ④ implementation of a system focusing on quantitative increase in manpower. Therefore, there is a limit to training skilled workers in response to new environmental changes. The paradigm of increasing quantitative manpower centered on suppliers is not enough to respond to changes in construction sites due to social and cultural changes and the fourth industrial revolution. The demand for construction workers is expected to decrease and the capacity change is expected, but the youth is still reluctant to do so. This can be a factor that makes sustainability difficult for the industry. Eventually, a new environment change calls for a paradigm shift in training construction workers. This means that the paradigm should shift from increasing 'quantitative' centered on suppliers to increasing 'qualitative' reflecting the needs of consumers. Specifically, ① Strengthen efforts to present a vision as a profession, ② nurture manpower in multiple aspects, ③ seek changes in education and training methods to foster skilled workers, and ④ Need to increase official employment-linked services. As the job characteristics of the construction industry are changing, existing personnel need to be able to adapt to new environmental changes. It is hoped that the construction industry will become a "decent job" by shifting to a new production method and responding to changes in demand capacity.