Professional Liability in Japan: Just bow! bow! bow!

"The Japan Times"
Monday, March 31, 2008
SAFETY REPORTEDLY NOT COMPROMISED
Company falsified data on bridge component
OSAKA (Kyodo) An Osaka-based construction material firm admitted Sunday to falsifying data on a product used in highway bridges and skipping required specification tests before it was used in several locations nationwide.
ST Engineering Corp. President Shingo Taniyama bows in apology at a news conference Sunday in Yao, Osaka Prefecture. KYODO PHOTO
The component, a polyethylene sheath, covers steel reinforcement rods inside concrete columns and protects them from corrosion (ahí no es nada...).
ST Engineering Corp., based in Yao, Osaka Prefecture, fabricated ( lo que en román paladino en algunos países incivilizados vienen denominado falsedad documental http://cita.es/falsedad/documental/) documents to show that the product had passed required examinations of its specifications, even though such tests were never conducted. The company submitted bogus test results to the firms that run highways.
ST Engineering President Shingo Taniyama offered an apology at a hastily arranged news conference in Yao.
"We were desperate to increase sales," ( claro que si amigos eso os exime de toda culpa, pobechillos, os imagino corriendo por los pasillos de la empresa corriendo como hamsters ciegos en celo, gritando incoherencias) Taniyama said. "We were confident of its safety" because the company had sold similar products overseas.(Traducción: Le hemos vendido la mierda componente este sin garantías técnicas a paletos occidentales y chinos y hasta el día de hoy no se han quejado de nada).
In 2004, the now-defunct Japan Highway Public Corp. introduced new specification requirements for the polyethylene sheath, and its makers were obliged to conduct and pass 10 tests before JH would grant approval for its use.
Three highway companies spun off from JH's privatization in 2005 adopted the same requirements. But the requirements did not oblige makers to submit proof that the tests were conducted properly, according to sources (¿ Requisitos técnicos cuyo cumplimiento no debe ser probado? Esto es seriedad, si señor).
"The financial burden of conducting such tests was too heavy for us," (hombre para ustedes, para su competencia dentro de Japón y no digamos para las compañías extranjeras que quisiesen participar en las adjudicaciones con sus productos, a las que tengo para mi que seguramente estos requisitos técnicos si resultarían de prueba obligatoria... ) an ST Engineering official was quoted as saying. "The quality of the product has not changed since the system was introduced, and there are no safety worries."("In God we trust").
The tests reportedly cost several million yen. ST Engineering falsified reports at least twice, in April and May 2005, and submitted them to JH. After the product's approval, the polyethylene sheath was delivered between August 2005 and March this year to 22 bridge construction sites on several expressways, including the Higashi Kyushu Expressway in Oita Prefecture and No. 2 Tomei Highway now being built to connect Tokyo and Nagoya.
After the falsification was discovered and became known to other parties, ST Engineering conducted the tests in March, the sources said.
"The sheath itself is not a structural part of a bridge (Que maravilla de manipulación del lenguaje,claro que el cobertor plástico no es estructural caballero, pero el cableado de acero que protege de la corrosión si lo es). It was reported to us that the product was properly used at the bridge construction sites," a spokesman for West Nippon Expressway Co. said. "We therefore don't see any safety problems."
The transgression, however, brings into question the effectiveness of highway companies' specification requirements, industry sources said (Hombre eso como poco, pero.. ¿ Que hay de las consecuencias legales? ¿ Algúna sanción administrativa aunque sea chiquitita? Parece que no, todos sabemos que, en Japón, la genuflexión de grado 45 es suficiente castigo ).