The experienced technician retires. The fix should not leave too.

What happened

On 5 February 2026, VDAB, the Flemish public employment service, published its list of 227 bottleneck occupations for 2026: jobs where vacancies are hard to fill. More than half of the ten largest are technical jobs in industry or construction, including industrial electromechanic, machine setter-operator for machining, technician for construction, agricultural and lifting machines, industrial maintenance manager and site manager. VDAB notes that the shortage of technical profiles remains large, even while several industrial sectors face restructuring.

VDAB points to ageing as a structural cause: for every 100 people who retire, only 81 young people enter the labour market. Employers also look for specific competences and experience that candidates do not always have. The occupation structure behind the list was revised this year, so it cannot be compared directly with earlier lists. At European level, the EURES summary of the 2025 report, published on 29 June 2026, names electricians, plumbers and roofers among the trades needed for building renovation and renewable energy. The European Labour Authority describes the imbalances as structural rather than short-term.

The shortage is in experience, not only in headcount

A vacancy can be filled in months. Years of experience with a specific installation cannot. Much of that experience is not written down in one place. It sits in a manufacturer’s manual, in a schematic on a shared drive, in an old service ticket that describes the same fault, and in the memory of the colleague who solved it last time. A new technician often knows that the answer exists somewhere, but not where.

The result is familiar in many service and maintenance teams: time spent searching, calls to the one person who knows, and reports written afterwards from memory. These are typical patterns rather than findings from the VDAB study, which describes the labour market and not how companies manage knowledge.

• Scattered sources. Manuals, schematics, tickets and notes live in different systems and formats.
• Unwritten fixes. The solution to a recurring fault is often known, but not recorded with the machine.
• Slow onboarding. New colleagues depend on experienced ones who are already scarce.

Make knowledge findable at the machine

Software does not solve a labour shortage. It can make sure that what the organisation already knows is available when it is needed. With Meridian AI, a technician asks an ordinary question, such as how to reset a specific drive after a fault, and receives an answer that cites the manual page and earlier interventions it was drawn from. The technician opens the source and decides. Safety instructions and lockout procedures stay with the manufacturer’s documentation and your own procedures; an answer points to them, it does not replace them.

After the job, Meridian AI can draft the intervention report from notes or a recorded memo, for the technician to check and correct. Meridian Platform links that report to the machine or customer and follows up open tasks, so the next fix is recorded where the next colleague will look. Source-backed answers and task follow-up are existing capabilities; connecting your manuals and service history is set up per project.

Start with one installation or product line

A practical pilot takes the documentation and service history of one installation type or product line, and a small group of technicians, experienced and new. Measure how long it takes today to find the right instruction for a set of real questions, and how often the answer is wrong or incomplete. Repeat with source-backed search. The experienced technicians judge whether the answers are usable; their corrections improve the sources for everyone.

Software does not train a technician. It can keep what the last one learned within reach of the next.