| TOP |
| 5th Report of Market Access Ombudsman Council (March 17, 1998) |
1. Complainant: U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Japan
2. Ministry concerned: Ministry of Construction
3. Complaint:
The burden of the necessary JIS verification procedures ("JIS verification," hereinafter) for supplying imported glass for use in public construction work is a barrier to market access, and the following improvements should be made.
(1) Acquisition of JIS verification is necessary for construction glass that is to be supplied for public construction work, but as the voluminous documentation that must be submitted along with samples is excessively expensive, procedures should be simplified.
(2) JIS verification should be revised within a short time. Too much time is being taken to revise the procedure, and a reduction of time is thus necessary.
4. Corresponding Policy of the Ministries concerned:
At the Government Buildings Department of the Ministry of Construction, at the time construction materials are carried on site, supervisory staff attempts to confirm, with the objective of securing quality, whether the materials satisfy the quality and performance specified on the blueprints.
Conventionally, for materials without the JIS mark and official verification, for each individual construction site, supervisory personnel confirmed conformance, necessitating that they verify test data and judge whether quality and performance conformed to the blueprints. For this procedure, control and verification of test data took time and effort, which could obstruct the smooth use of the relevant construction materials.
For this reason, with the aims of making this confirmation work efficient and promoting the use of good, low-price construction materials from overseas, Public Building Association and Better Living began quality and performance evaluation work on construction materials. At the Government Buildings Department, in addition to the aforementioned confirmation procedure, since March of 1994 it has been possible to confirm by submitting copies of the above organizations' evaluations. During the three-year period for which an evaluation is valid, it will also be valid at Government Building Department sites.
Moreover, at the aforementioned organizations, from the standpoint of reliability, the data necessary for evaluation purposes is from the tests of public agencies and testing agencies within Japan and overseas, and which country's testing agency is selected is left to the applicant to judge.
In addition, when renewing an evaluation after three years, as long as there have been no changes in standards, materials or the like, test data will not be confirmed, and new testing will not be necessary.
As in the past, it is also possible to seek confirmation of quality and performance at individual sites.
This quality and performance evaluation work is useful for promoting the use of overseas construction materials.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has referred to verification based on quality and performance work as "JIS verification," but there is no direct connection to it.