In this blog, Matt Harvey explores how professional judgement is shaped through real-world experience, highlighting the important role that employers, alongside colleges and training providers, play in helping people develop the skills and confidence needed to become work-ready.

The Experience Gap: Why Industry Must Become a Bigger Part of the Education System

For a technical sector such as RACHP, that creates a particular risk. The industry is not standing still while the workforce develops. Technology is moving forward, environmental requirements are changing, new refrigerants and systems are being introduced and the role of engineers is becoming increasingly interconnected with controls, electrification, energy efficiency and digital technologies.

The skills pipeline therefore has to develop faster than the technology is changing.

Education cannot work in isolation from industry

There is sometimes an unhelpful assumption that the responsibility for producing work-ready people sits primarily with colleges and training providers. Education absolutely has a responsibility to provide high-quality teaching, assessment and learner support, but it cannot realistically reproduce every aspect of the modern workplace.

A training centre can provide equipment, controlled practical environments and structured learning. What it cannot completely recreate is the unpredictability and complexity of real engineering work. In the workplace, an engineer may arrive at a system where the fault described by the customer is not the actual fault. They may have to interpret incomplete information, work within time constraints, consider safety implications, communicate with a customer and make a technical decision based on evidence and experience.

That professional judgement develops through exposure.

An experienced engineer knows that two systems that appear technically similar may behave very differently in practice. They know which questions to ask, what information to look for and which apparently minor detail could indicate a much larger problem. They have developed habits of safe working, fault diagnosis and professional decision-making through thousands of hours of experience.

This knowledge is extraordinarily valuable to a learner. It is also difficult to capture entirely within a qualification specification. That is why the relationship between education and industry needs to become much stronger.

The answer is not to ask education to become more like industry. The answer is to create a system where education and industry continually inform one another.

Experienced engineers are an educational resource

The RACHP sector already possesses a substantial educational resource: its people.

Across the industry there are experienced engineers, supervisors, project managers, service managers, technical specialists, manufacturers, consultants and professionals who have spent decades developing expertise. Some are still working full-time. Others may be approaching retirement. Many will never consider themselves educators, but that does not mean that they do not have an important contribution to make to education.

The traditional distinction between "engineer" and "trainer" needs to become more flexible.

An experienced professional does not necessarily need to leave industry to contribute to education. They could spend a small amount of time each month supporting a college or training provider, deliver specialist sessions, mentor apprentices, provide technical demonstrations, support curriculum development, participate in assessment activities or help learners understand what a career in RACHP actually looks like.

For a learner, hearing from somebody who has spent 20 years working on complex systems can be transformative. It changes the learning experience from something theoretical into something connected to a real profession.

It also gives learners something that cannot easily be delivered through a textbook: context.

A technical principle becomes more meaningful when a learner understands why it matters to an engineer. A safety procedure becomes more memorable when an experienced professional explains the consequences of getting it wrong. A fault-finding exercise becomes more engaging when the learner hears how the same problem might present itself on a real site.

This is not about replacing lecturers or trainers. It is about giving them access to the experience and expertise of the sector they are preparing people to enter.

The benefits are also significant for industry professionals

There is another reason why this model should be encouraged: the benefits do not flow in only one direction.

Industry professionals who engage with education can develop their own communication, coaching, mentoring and leadership capabilities. Explaining a complex technical problem to a learner requires the professional to think differently about how knowledge is structured and communicated. It can expose experienced engineers to new perspectives and encourage reflection on established working practices.

For businesses, involvement with education can also become an important part of succession planning.

An employer that supports an apprentice is not simply filling a vacancy. It is developing a person who can potentially become a future engineer, supervisor, manager or technical specialist within the organisation. The relationship can begin well before a permanent position becomes available.

This is particularly important when the sector is facing an ageing workforce. The IOR's research highlights the concern around the workforce structure and the "missing middle" of engineers aged approximately 25 to 40. This creates a succession challenge because experienced professionals are carrying significant amounts of organisational and technical knowledge, while there are not always enough people progressing through the system behind them.

The industry therefore needs to think about succession not simply in terms of replacing employees, but replacing experience.

That is a much harder challenge.

Apprenticeships provide one of the strongest solutions

Apprenticeships are particularly important because they provide a mechanism through which education and workplace experience can operate together rather than separately.

A strong apprenticeship allows the learner to acquire knowledge through structured education while developing practical competence within an employer environment. The employer provides the workplace context and day-to-day professional experience, while the training provider provides the structured learning, support and assessment framework.

This model is particularly suited to technical occupations.

The evidence for the employer benefits of apprenticeships is also compelling. Total People reports government research showing that 85% of employers said apprenticeships helped them develop skills relevant to their organisation and 78% reported improved productivity. A further 74% reported improvements in product or service quality.

These figures demonstrate that apprenticeships should not be viewed simply as a mechanism for bringing young people into employment. They can be a strategic workforce-development tool.

The employer has the opportunity to shape talent from an early stage, introduce its standards and expectations, develop organisational knowledge and create a longer-term talent pipeline.

For the learner, the benefit is equally important. They are not simply being taught about a profession; they are experiencing it.

That distinction matters.

RACHP is at the centre of the UK's transition to a low-carbon economy

The urgency is increased by the role RACHP professionals will play in the UK's energy transition.

Heat pumps are a particularly obvious example. Government analysis has repeatedly identified the need to increase the number of skilled people able to install and maintain heat pump systems. The UK's Clean Energy Jobs Plan estimates that the heat and buildings workforce will need to grow from around 66,000 people in 2023 to approximately 248,000 by 2030. Around 9,000 people undertook heat pump training in the UK during 2024, demonstrating that training demand is already significant.

The government's 2026 Warm Homes Plan estimates that there are currently around 10,000 trained and active heat pump installers, equivalent to approximately 4,000 full-time-equivalent installers because many continue to work across other technologies. It estimates that approximately 12,000 full-time-equivalent installers will be required by 2030.

This is not simply a question of increasing the number of training places.

The workforce needs to be competent.

Heat pumps, refrigeration systems, air conditioning and associated technologies increasingly require professionals who understand system design, commissioning, controls, energy efficiency and the interaction between different technologies. The National Careers Service's profile for heat pump engineers, for example, highlights installation and maintenance alongside knowledge of low-temperature heating and hot-water systems and different heat pump technologies.

The technical landscape is becoming broader, not narrower.

That makes the role of experienced trainers and industry specialists even more important.

Training needs to become a continuous relationship

We should also move away from thinking about training as something that happens only when someone first enters the industry.

The RACHP sector is changing too quickly for that model to work.

The professional who qualified ten years ago may now be working with technologies, refrigerants, controls or systems that were not central to their original training. Similarly, the lecturer who qualified or entered teaching many years ago needs opportunities to remain connected to current workplace practice.

This creates a need for continuous movement between education and industry.

Lecturers and trainers should have opportunities to visit workplaces, undertake technical updating and understand emerging technologies. Employers should have routes into colleges and training centres. Learners should have meaningful access to employers. Experienced engineers should have opportunities to share their knowledge.

The relationship should not end when an apprentice completes their qualification.

It should become a continuing professional ecosystem.

The IOR's role is particularly important in helping to create that ecosystem because it sits at the intersection of professional standards, technical expertise, education, careers and industry engagement.

The Institute's decision to make education and skills a strategic priority and establish the Industry Skills Alliance reflects the recognition that these challenges cannot be solved by individual organisations working independently. The Alliance provides a practical forum bringing together employers, educators, trainers and other stakeholders to improve alignment between industry requirements and training provision.

The opportunity for the IOR and Total People

There is a significant opportunity to develop this work further through collaboration between the IOR, training providers such as Total People and employers across the RACHP sector.

Total People brings experience of delivering apprenticeships and work-based learning and working with employers to develop workforce capability. Its current apprenticeship work demonstrates the wider business value that can be created when learning and employment are brought together.

The IOR brings something equally important: sector expertise, professional credibility, technical networks and a direct connection to the challenges facing RACHP employers.

Bringing these capabilities together creates the possibility of developing a stronger model for industry engagement.

Rather than asking individual colleges to independently find technical professionals who can support delivery, the sector could develop a structured network of experienced industry experts willing to contribute to education. Training providers could identify the areas where additional industry input is required, while the IOR could help connect those requirements with its professional membership and wider network.

This could include experienced engineers supporting apprentices, specialists delivering technical masterclasses, manufacturers providing insight into emerging technology, employers hosting visits, professionals supporting STEM and careers activity, and experienced practitioners contributing to curriculum development.

The important point is that the model needs to be structured.

Industry engagement cannot depend solely on goodwill or individual relationships. If the sector genuinely believes that experienced professionals have an important role in education, then there needs to be a framework that makes participation straightforward, recognised and sustainable.

We should also think differently about retirement

The ageing workforce presents a challenge, but it also represents an opportunity.

When an experienced engineer retires, the sector does not necessarily need to lose all of that person's knowledge.

There could be a much stronger role for experienced professionals in education during the later stages of their careers and beyond full-time employment. A retired or semi-retired engineer could provide mentoring, support practical training, contribute to technical discussions or help learners understand how the industry has developed.

Their value is not simply the technical knowledge they possess. It is the accumulated judgement that comes from experience.

If we allow that experience to disappear without creating opportunities for knowledge transfer, the sector loses something that takes decades to build.

This is why education should be considered part of the industry's succession strategy.

Training the next generation is not someone else's responsibility.

It is how the profession preserves its knowledge.

The commercial case for industry involvement

There is also a strong commercial argument.

The cost of an unfilled technical vacancy is not limited to recruitment expenditure. It can affect productivity, project delivery, customer service, overtime, supervision and the capacity of experienced employees.

When a new employee requires substantial remedial training, the cost is absorbed somewhere within the organisation. Often, that cost falls on the most experienced members of the workforce because they are the people expected to provide the additional supervision and coaching.

The IOR's research specifically identifies increased supervision and mentoring requirements, longer time-to-productivity and additional pressure on experienced engineers as consequences of the current competence gap.

Training therefore needs to be understood as an investment in organisational capacity.

The strongest businesses will not simply compete for experienced engineers.

They will build systems that create experienced engineers.

That means recruiting apprentices, investing in existing staff, supporting professional development and developing relationships with education providers.

It also means recognising that the person who trains an apprentice today may be developing the engineer who will eventually become the technical expert, service manager or business leader of tomorrow.

What would success look like?

Success should not simply be measured by the number of learners enrolled on courses.

A stronger measure would be whether employers are seeing improved competence among new entrants, whether apprentices are progressing successfully, whether experienced professionals are contributing to education, whether trainers have current industry knowledge and whether employers have confidence that training provision reflects the skills they actually need.

It should also be measured through progression.

Are apprentices staying in the industry?

Are they becoming competent engineers?

Are they progressing into supervisory and management positions?

Are employers retaining them?

Are experienced professionals transferring knowledge to the next generation?

Are colleges and training providers able to access the technical expertise they need?

These are the outcomes that will ultimately determine whether the skills system is working.

The IOR Industry Skills Alliance provides an opportunity to bring those questions together and develop a coordinated approach.

The sector has an opportunity to act now

There is no shortage of discussion about skills.

Government has published strategies. Employers are reporting shortages. Training providers are delivering programmes. Professional bodies are developing initiatives. Colleges are working hard to recruit and support learners.

The missing ingredient is often the depth of connection between these activities.

Industry needs to be closer to education.

Education needs to be closer to industry.

Experienced professionals need clearer routes into teaching, mentoring and knowledge transfer.

And apprenticeships need to be viewed not simply as qualifications, but as a structured partnership between employer, learner and training provider.

The RACHP sector has an opportunity to lead this approach.

The IOR's Industry Skills Alliance can provide the platform. Training providers such as Total People can help translate employer requirements into effective work-based learning. Colleges can provide the educational infrastructure. Employers can provide the workplace, the technology and the experience. And experienced professionals can provide something that is perhaps the sector's most valuable educational asset of all: knowledge gained through doing the job.

The challenge is significant, but the opportunity is equally significant.

The technologies that will define the next decade of RACHP are already developing. The demand for skilled people is already increasing. The evidence from employers is already telling us that competence and experience matter.

We therefore need to stop thinking of education as a service that industry purchases when it needs to recruit.

Education is part of the industry's infrastructure.

If RACHP wants a workforce capable of installing, maintaining, designing, commissioning and managing the increasingly sophisticated systems upon which the UK depends, then industry must help build that workforce.

That means opening workplaces to learners, opening classrooms to experienced professionals and creating a genuine two-way exchange of knowledge between those who teach and those who practise.

Ultimately, the question is not simply whether industry can afford to give time to education.

The more important question is whether the sector can afford not to.

The engineers working in RACHP today will eventually become the experienced professionals who understand the systems, technologies and challenges of tomorrow. But that experience will not appear automatically. It has to be developed, supported and transferred.

If we want the next generation to be better prepared than the last, we have to give them access to the people who know what the job really involves.

That is the opportunity in front of the RACHP sector now: to turn experience into education, education into competence, and competence into the workforce that will enable the industry to grow and adapt over the next decade.

The future of RACHP will depend not only on attracting new people into the profession, but on how effectively we transfer the knowledge, experience and professional standards of today's workforce to those who will lead it tomorrow.