Manufacturer courses and formal training play their part, but so do years spent fault finding, commissioning live systems, working through difficult projects, learning from experienced colleagues and figuring things out independently.
There is real value in that.
BMS is a practical discipline. Buildings rarely behave exactly as expected, and some of the most valuable engineering judgement develops through exposure to problems that cannot be recreated in a classroom.
The question is whether the industry has become too dependent on engineers finding those development opportunities for themselves.
The Experience Gap
Consider two junior BMS engineers starting their careers at the same time.
One spends three years alongside experienced engineers, gaining exposure to software, commissioning, fault finding, client meetings and increasingly complex projects.
The other spends those same three years carrying out a much narrower range of work, with limited mentoring and fewer opportunities to step beyond their immediate responsibilities.
On paper, both now have three years of BMS experience.
In practice, their development could look completely different.
This is where an experience-led approach becomes difficult to rely on consistently. Who you work alongside, which projects you are assigned to and how much responsibility you are given can have an enormous influence on the engineer you become.
It also means years of experience alone can be a poor measure of capability.
Developing More of the Engineers the Industry Needs
This becomes particularly important in a market where experienced BMS professionals remain difficult to find.
When a business needs an experienced Commissioning Engineer, Project Engineer or senior technical specialist, recruiting someone from another BMS company solves the immediate vacancy. Across the wider industry, the same experienced person has simply moved from one employer to another.
Growing the available talent pool requires more people to develop into those positions. That puts greater importance on what happens during the earlier stages of an engineer’s career.
- Are they working alongside people they can learn from?
- Are they being exposed to different technologies and different stages of a project?
- Are they gradually being trusted with more complex work?
- Are they given opportunities to understand the wider system rather than one narrow part of it?
Formal courses can support that development, but the working environment determines how much of that learning becomes genuine capability.
Building Capability More Deliberately
Independent learning will always be valuable in BMS. Curiosity, problem-solving and the willingness to work something out are qualities found in many excellent engineers.
The opportunity is to build stronger development structures around those qualities.
That could mean better mentoring, broader project exposure, structured technical training and a clearer progression of responsibility as engineers become more capable.
For an industry facing continued demand for experienced technical people, recruitment can only move existing capability around the market.
Long-term growth also depends on how effectively the industry creates more of it.
VIGO Recruitment is a specialist recruitment agency focused on BMS (Building Management Systems), Smart Buildings and Energy Optimisation, combining deep industry expertise with live market intelligence.