Washington State Imported Housing and Building Materials Web Site

Welcome to the State of Washington's new housing and building materials web site. This site is sponsored by the State of Washington's Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development and the U.S. Export Assistance Center.

The State of Washington works with over 200 companies that export value added wood products, building materials, and related professional services to Japan. Over the last decade the State of Washington has been at the forefront of market development activities for imported housing in Japan. Washington is the only state office in Japan with a full time resident housing specialist. Japan's largest imported house model home park opened in early 1996 in Kobe, sponsored by Hyogo Prefecture. Washington State was the largest supplier of houses in this beautiful new model home park. Washington Village, a joint housing project in the early 1990's with Hyogo Prefecture, remains the largest imported housing planned community in Japan. In March 1996, Washington State launched one of the most comprehensive technology transfer programs ever conducted in Japan - a 12 month long continuing education program for builders to teach cost-effective techniques and management for US building materials. Other market development activities include an active schedule of housing trade missions, pavilions in major Japanese home shows, bilingual directories of products and services, and technical information handout materials.

Washington State exports over 50 percent of the US total of wooden building materials to Japan, making it the leading US exporter. The majority of these products are consumed by the Japanese housing industry. Some of the leading export products are engineered wood products (glu-lam beams, wood I beam joists, etc.), pre-fabricated house packages, wood doors and wood windows.

Washington State's building materials housing expert in Japan is available to provide Japanese companies with information on imported housing, and to introduce Washington State suppliers of building materials, panelized housing, design and construction services. For further information, please contact:

State of Washington Japan Office 5-4-8-301, Toranomon Minato-ku Tokyo, 105 Phone: 03-5776-7766 Fax: 03-3459-0897

Original Proposal

Comprehensive Plan for Web Site

This site will incorporate a large menu system with many choices of content and will be structured in a bilingual format (English and Japanese), eventually supporting other languages as it grows. Some of the primary functions of this site include a company directory, on line newsletter, schedule of events (calendar), program information, restricted access information, contact info and request system, and links to other state and federal organizations. There could be as many as 48 unique pages not counting the directory entries (currently 109 total entries) and other user restricted information. These figures would be doubled for bilingual implementation with a rough total of about 314 pages. Through proper planning and implementation, this site will eventually compare with many of the industries leading web sites such as NAHB, Builder on Line and Andersen Windows. Please see the attached flow chart for a detailed example of the areas this kind of comprehensive web site could include. Due to the volume of information and quantity of work involved, it was proposed that the project be divided into several phases.

Initial Phase of Implementation

The site will be partially implemented in the initial phase, followed by further implementation in subsequent stages in order to effectively reach the initial goal in a timely and realistic manner. The first phase will be implemented as a bilingual set of identical pages, differing only in that the company data in the directory will be implemented only on the Japanese side. A typical example of company data will be shown in English and Japanese data (digitized) will be added to the English pages so that vendors without Japanese operating systems can view an example of the data. In addition to the main menu top level page, pages for an introduction, a consolidator directory, contact info and links to other state and federal organizations are being planned. The English portion of this phase will likely have 13 unique pages, and the Japanese counterpart would require 11 pages not counting the directory entries (30 total consolidator entries). This would amount to a total of 54 pages with both the English and Japanese versions.

Implementing Subsequent Phases

It is realistic to assume that subsequent phases of this web site would be implemented in at least two more stages similar to the first phase. Which elements are chosen and their priority will depend on the resources available and the schedule requirements. A possible scenario would be to implement pages for the remaining directory, event calendar, program info, request for info system and search functions. This could be followed by pages for the information intensive areas such as the newsletter, periodic feature and restricted access information. From this first phase on, much of the ground work will have been laid, and the amount of time required to implement subsequent pages will be reduced considerably. These later stages will not be graphic intensive and will incorporate templates developed early on, thereby increasing efficiency and saving on design costs. As the web site grows, however, the amount of maintenance required will increase accordingly, especially when a database of users and passwords must be maintained to allow access to certain parts of the web site. In-house training on maintenance issues and updating these password lists will be crucial to helping to keep overhead costs down for the web site.

Phase Two Scenario

Due to the directory size, the second phase probably contains the most volume of information. In order to implement a complete version of the directory, an event calendar, program info and request for info system, it is calculated that approximately 18 new pages would be needed not counting directory entries (79 currently) for a bilingual set of 194 pages (Plus 30 English directory entries omitted in phase one for a total of about 224 pages). The smooth implementation of this phase will rely on already created templates and the availability of text-file based information for directory entries and program info, which will be assisted by working closely with the desktop publisher for the new versions. Due to lack of original information in English, there will be a certain amount of translation and data entry involved to generate the English portions of the directory entries and program information. Training will become important as more material is introduced to the web site and the need for changes and updates starts to grow.

Phase Three Scenario

Phase three will encompass the remaining information intensive areas, i.e. newsletter, periodic feature, restricted access information, and search functions for an approximate total of 18 unique pages, doubled for a bilingual total of 36 pages. Though the pages in this phase are few, they will incorporate high volumes of text thus the availability of that text on disk is critical to quick and smooth implementation. The pages intended for user restricted access will incorporate Java script to enable access to password verified users. The time required to incorporate the web site search engine and counter functions will depend on the availability of Microsoft Frontpage Extensions for the host server that is selected. In the final phase it will be important to finalize all of the cosmetic and design changes. Once the project has been completed, the URL address for this web site can be registered with search engines in both Japanese and English. Maintenance will be ongoing, consisting of simple updates to information and making small changes to the text. Training will be important to allow this to happen in-house, thereby reducing the cost of operation.

Web Design by Global Web Consulting

Flowchart for Full Implementation

Main Menu - What's New - TOC - Intro - Directory - Newsletter
Calendar - Programs - Request Info - Tech Forum - Contacts - Links - Search

Washington State Housing & Building Materials for Japan. Last modified: 04/10/02