“We’ve done the compliance training,” he said. “We’ve got the equipment. We just can’t find anyone who’s actually worked on these systems in the field.”
A service manager called me a few weeks ago.
Good operator. Solid business. Been around long enough to know what he’s doing.
They’d just won a decent commercial fit-out project with A2L refrigerants specified throughout.
And that’s the bit a lot of businesses are starting to run into.
You can buy the unit. You can buy the gauges. You can pay for the compliance course.
You still can’t buy experience that doesn’t yet exist in volume.
The Job Has Moved. The Brief Hasn’t.
NCC 2025 was adopted in Victoria from 1 May 2026. That means every new commercial project signed off from that date is operating to a higher technical standard than a large chunk of the available workforce was originally trained for.
That’s not a future problem sitting quietly on the horizon. It’s already here.
In PSO’s October 2025 HVACR Workforce Survey, 38.7% of respondents said flammable refrigerant handling needed further skill development. CO₂ systems came in at 27.2%. Electronic controls, commissioning, VSDs and electrical competencies all featured heavily too.
Not isolated businesses either. The gaps are showing up everywhere.
And yet the hiring briefs often still read like it’s 2019.
Same job title. Different job entirely.
The Industry Keeps Talking Like the Workforce Already Exists.
It doesn’t.
The most common thing I hear is: “We’ll train them when we need to.”
That sounds reasonable until the project’s live, the client’s pushing, your senior tech is already stretched across six jobs, and the only bloke who really understands the controls sequence is somewhere on annual leave pretending not to answer his phone.
The second assumption is that the market will eventually catch up.
Maybe it will.
But curriculum reviews don’t magically produce experienced technicians overnight. They produce apprentices. Years later. Assuming they finish. And right now, around one in two don’t.
The third strategy is trying to hire someone who’s already done all this before.
Good luck.
That person exists. They’re already employed. And every other contractor is chasing the exact same individual.
What the Businesses Getting Ahead Are Actually Doing
They’ve accepted the capability shortage is real, so they’re building talent earlier and more deliberately.
They hire people with learning agility. They pair less experienced techs with strong seniors. They stop expecting one overworked gun technician to carry every technically difficult project on the books.
And importantly, they’ve updated their hiring briefs to reflect what the role actually is now.
None of this is revolutionary.
It’s just what happens when businesses accept reality earlier than everyone else.
The Brief Has Changed
Capability does not come with the unit.
It doesn’t arrive with the compliance certificate. And it definitely doesn’t appear because the job ad says “must hit the ground running” on systems most of the available market hasn’t touched yet.
If your hiring briefs still describe the role as it existed five years ago, and you’re wondering why the right people aren’t coming through, that’s probably not a market problem anymore.
It’s a brief problem.
And it’s worth fixing before the next project lands. At TMR we work with businesses that are ahead of this – and those that are just starting to feel it. Either way, the conversation is worth having. Get in touch.
