Design offices and Construction Management (CM)

Currently, Miyako City has positioned the sixth year after the earthquake as a "development period" after reconstruction, and various efforts are being made to develop the city as more vibrant and attractive than before the earthquake. One of them is the construction of a new government building in the central city area where Miyako Station is located, which is scheduled to be completed in July 2018. Mitsubishi Jisho Design Co., Ltd. is participating in this project "Miyako City Center Base Facility Construction Management Support Business" as a Construction Management (CM) company. Many people may think, "Is the design office a CM?", but our company has been doing CM work under the name of supervision for a long time. In addition, in 2000, when it was the architectural design and construction supervision business headquarters of Mitsubishi Estate Co., Ltd., we established the CM Office, which is currently working as the CM Department of Mitsubishi Jisho Design Co., Ltd. From the initial Cost Management center, we now have a diverse menu of operations throughout the project to support our clients.

CM is defined as "a construction manager (CMr), who is the assistant or agent of the client, who maintains technical neutrality and stands on the client's side, and performs all or part of various management tasks such as design review, construction ordering method review, schedule management, quality control, and cost management at each stage of design, ordering, and construction." (*)

Many design offices may think, "That's what we do as part of our architectural design and construction supervision work." When I explain CM, I say, "CM in Japan is a construction project that combines part of the client's work with the management work that designers have been responsible for, and has been established as a profession." Perhaps this is because the third-party nature was emphasized in the early days of CM, but there is still a lack of understanding of CM, which has expanded to a wide range of work, and there are still many design offices that have built a "wall" between themselves and CM.

The CM method has been adopted not only in Miyako City, but in many construction projects in the Tohoku region during the earthquake reconstruction effort. One reason for this is that the flexible role of CM has been recognized anew in the emergency situation of earthquake reconstruction. In public works outside of Tohoku, an increasing number of local governments are adopting CM to manage construction projects. In 2016, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism created a "Collection of Case Studies of the CM Method Used by Local Governments, etc.", which lists many advanced examples from both the public and private sectors.

Furthermore, the 2014 amendment to the Act on Promotion of Quality Assurance of Public Works (Quality Assurance Act) made "diverse ordering methods" possible. A symbolic event is the National Stadium. The bid was initially scrapped, but then a new tender was held, with the joint venture of Kengo Kuma, Azusa Sekkei, and Taisei Corporation being selected based on their proposal. Construction work is currently underway, and as can be seen, ordering methods other than the conventional method of separating design and construction are now being implemented.

Traditionally, the private sector has adopted a free "ordering method." Furthermore, the "diverse ordering methods" that have been adopted by the public sector, such as DB from design development, ECI method, and adoption of third-party Construction Supervision, now seem to be influencing the private sector in the opposite direction. Rather than a simple choice between separate design and construction or a one-off method, more and more clients are seeking better quality at a reasonable price by involving many capable people and organizations in construction projects. As the "way" of building becomes more diverse, more advanced management is required.

For design firms to continue to develop as leaders in the architectural world, they must seize this situation as an opportunity, remove the barriers between architectural design and construction supervision and CM work, integrate and develop their know-how, and transform into organizations that can manage entire construction projects.

(※) Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's "Guidelines for Utilizing the CM Method" (2002)