food for thought

[superswill]

Just some food for thought, I came into this industry via the old fashioned way started as a “mate” on install nothing more than a spanner passer at 17 years old until I earned my strips and started installing my own jobs, after being a part of an install on a very large project the office said they would send there service engineers down to help commission, so when this all knowing man appears out of a very nice estate car I get thinking ok so I can fit them but do I truly know how they work?, no was the answer so I started life on the service side nothing more than a filter cleaner the view being if you find a problem have a look but if you cant do it we will send a service engineer, so after a lot of mistakes I started fixing or at least diagnosing more problems than I couldn’t then one day I was the one being sent on the service calls and I was one of these magic service engineers, I now work for a large FM company on the service side but also after doing a year of commissioning for a manufacture(until the disrupter went bust I worked for) Iam also still commissioning large VFV projects. i think the point iam trying to make is that are we in danger of losing this “home grown” personnel? I mean with every tom **** and harry claiming to fit/service air conditioning (ive seen a number of plumbers van promoting this service) with the wealth of info available over the net+technical help lines and ac fault codes giving you more and more of an idea at where to look, aren’t we endangering ourselves and leaving the industry open to more and more people to “having a go” I met a number of people over the years that just get by with this in mind.

Any views?