What a project in Japan involves
If you have delivered offices in other countries, the technology will be familiar and the process will not. Every project here runs through the same eight stages. Each one has a purpose, and each causes a specific problem when it is skipped.
None of it is unusual for Japan. Most of it is unusual for a buyer arriving from somewhere else.
Eight stages, in this order
Stages three, four and seven are the ones foreign buyers are most often surprised by, and the ones that move a move-in date when they are missed.
Design
01
Survey and brief
We walk the floor, or the floor you are considering, and document what exists: risers, power, ceiling type, door hardware, potential cable routes, and the problems that will need to be planned around.
What you get. You tell us what the business needs. We tell you what the building will allow.
Without it. Signing a lease before anyone has checked power capacity, riser space or goods lift dimensions.
02
Design and documentation
Drawings, specifications and equipment schedules, issued in the format your designer, your global IT team and the building all need. We also negotiate and coordinate the requested works with the architect and the vendors the building specifies, so that what we are planning is integrated into the overall plan. This is where the budget becomes real.
What you get. You approve a design. Your head office gets a number it can plan against.
Without it. Pricing from a room list instead of a design, then discovering the difference during construction.
Approvals
03
Approvals and building coordination
Often missed
The building owner controls who carries out work inside their space and how it is done. Applications to the building for work permits, working hours, goods lift bookings, permission for the content of the work, and after-hours access. All of it in Japanese, in the format the building demands, completed weeks or months before the work is scheduled.
What you get. We deal with building management, the landlord and their appointed contractors. You do not.
Without it. Assuming approval is a formality. A rejected application moves your move-in date, not your budget.
04
Fire and life safety sign-off
Often missed
Anything touching ceilings, partitions, doors or the fire alarm is checked against the plan the fire service has already approved, before it is ordered. Do not risk move-in delays or refusals because works were not communicated and coordinated with the rest of the team. Safety is non-negotiable.
What you get. The building passes its next inspection and your office keeps operating.
Without it. A door locked for access control that the approved evacuation plan requires to stay open.
Build
05
Procurement
Ordering against real lead times. Hardware localised for compliance, with supply chain resilience and sustainability as priorities. In Japan, off the shelf typically means a week. Do not get caught out assuming you can fill the gaps at the end.
What you get. Equipment arrives configured, labelled and tested, staged to the construction programme.
Without it. Specifying a product that is not sold or supported in Japan, and finding out at order stage.
06
Installation and the other trades
Our engineers on site, working alongside the electrical, plumbing and air conditioning contractors appointed by the landlord, to a specification we wrote and a sequence we own. The person who built your design is the same person supervising and carrying out the installation. No gaps.
What you get. One programme instead of five. One person to call when something moves.
Without it. Four trades each hitting their own dates and colliding on site, because nobody owned the order.
07
Waste and site obligations
Often missed
There is no shared skip on a Japanese construction site. Deliveries have to be planned twice: once to get equipment on site, and again to remove the waste. Every company removes its own, and construction waste is industrial waste requiring a licensed carrier and a manifest trail.
What you get. Ours is in our programme and our price, with the paperwork kept.
Without it. Discovering mid-build that removal was never priced, by anyone, and is now urgent.
Handover
08
Commissioning and handover
Every system tested against the design, with as-built drawings, configuration records, test results, asset lists and user training handed over at completion.
What you get. You can hand the records to the next person, or to us, and nothing is lost.
Without it. A handover that is a set of keys and a phone number, leaving the next fault to start with discovery.
Delivery and staging
Commissioning before handover
Commonly missed
Five things people do not expect
Each of these has moved a real project. Together they are the difference between a planned build by local, licensed professionals and a vendor discovering problems after the point where they can be fixed.
The language gap is bigger than you expect
Everything on site runs in Japanese, from the documentation to the meetings themselves. Weekly, in-person site meetings are mandatory, and they start when your lease begins, which can be months or years before you move in.
The landlord picks some of your contractors, and their scope is not yours
Work inside your space that touches the systems of the building is carried out by a contractor appointed by the landlord, at a rate the landlord sets. Nobody else may do that work, however well qualified, so the boundary has to be known before the design is priced. Getting it wrong is the difference between a fixed price and a variation.
Approvals run on a calendar set by the building
Permits, working hours, goods lift bookings and after-hours access are applied for weeks ahead, in Japanese, on the forms the building issues. None of it is negotiable on the day.
Lead times are the schedule
Most equipment here is imported and local stock is thin. Two to three months is normal for many items, so procurement shapes the programme rather than following it.
Problems found late cannot always be fixed
A vendor who is not on site every week finds out that the riser is full, the power is short or the ceiling is already closed after the point where it can be resolved. Every week further into the programme, the fix costs more, and some surprises have no fix at all.
Cutting corners does not cut costs
We work hard to plan for every eventuality and to give you a proposal that is transparent, honest and realistic. That means it includes these costs, which exist on every project in Japan whether or not a quote mentions them.
We aim to deliver quality, and our proposal captures what that takes, so that it does not cost you further down the line.
Night and weekend work
Building rules often restrict noisy work, deliveries and lift use to nights and weekends. Where the building requires it, it is in our price from the start.
Mandatory meetings
Some meetings are compulsory: in person, on site and in Japanese. Attendance is part of the job, so it is part of the proposal.
Compliance and regulatory documentation
Work applications, safety documentation and completion records are not optional. Preparing and submitting them takes real hours, and we show those hours.
Qualified people on site
The law requires staff with the relevant experience, qualifications and licences to be on site for regulated work. We provide them, and we price them.
One team, in both languages
In English
Your side
Your IT team, your facilities lead, your procurement team and your regional management all need different things from the same project. We work in English with all of them, and we do not ask one of them to translate for the others.
[ mtc ]
English with your team. Japanese with the building.
In Japanese
The building side
Building management, the landlord, the electrical, plumbing and air conditioning contractors they appoint, the fire service and the carriers. All of that runs in Japanese, and it runs through us.
Questions
Questions we are asked before the first visit
Before you sign a lease if you can. Power and cooling capacity, riser space, goods lift dimensions, carrier options and room for a server room all vary between buildings, and all of them are cheaper to check than to work around.
We contract directly with clients. We hold our own construction licence, so the regulated work is done under our own licence, and the people who designed the system are the people who install it.
We find out at the application stage, and we propose an alternative that meets the same requirement. That is the main reason approvals sit at stage three and not stage six.
Yes, and we will tell you early where a standard cannot be met here, usually because a product is not sold or supported in Japan. We then propose an equivalent.
You do. As-built drawings, configuration records, test results and asset lists are handed over at completion, whether or not you keep us on for support.