I want to talk about what happens to knowledge when experienced technicians leave — through retirement, physical and mental burnout, or simply moving on — and what organisations can do about it before it's too late.

Every time an experienced technician leaves this industry, something leaves with them that we haven't worked out how to keep.

I've been to a lot of retirement parties in this industry. Some of them twice — because the person was asked to come back after they left, once everyone realised that sitting with them was decades of knowledge that nobody had thought to capture, document, or pass on properly. That's not a criticism of those individuals. It's a reflection of how little we invest in knowledge transfer until it's almost too late.

And the retirements are coming faster now.

Our workforce is ageing. The people who built their careers in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s — who learned by doing, who developed instincts and judgements that can't be found in any manual — are leaving. And in many cases, the organisations they're leaving haven't done the work to capture what they know.

But retirement isn't the only way knowledge leaves.

This is physically demanding work. I know that better than most — this industry has broken my body in ways I'm still managing. Even with better equipment and safer working practices than existed when I started, the cumulative toll of years of heavy lifting, awkward installs, long hours on concrete floors, and the relentless physicality of art logistics takes its toll. Working practices have improved significantly, but the early years of many careers in this industry were rough in ways we probably didn't fully acknowledge at the time.

And the physical toll is only part of it.

There's an emotional dimension to burnout in this industry that we talk about even less. We all know that person — the older technician who's still technically proficient but quietly (or not so quietly) checked out. Who does the job but isn't invested the way they once were. Who's seen too many rushed installs, too many last-minute changes, too many times when their expertise was assumed rather than valued. The industry has worn them down. And honestly — who can blame them?

Covid accelerated all of this. A significant number of experienced people left the profession entirely between 2020 and 2022, moving into other industries or simply not coming back when venues reopened. Some of them were at the peak of their knowledge and capability. That loss hasn't been fully reckoned with.

So we have an ageing workforce leaving through retirement. We have experienced people physically incapable, burning out or moving on. We have knowledge that lives almost entirely in people's heads rather than in documented standards or structured training programmes. And we have organisations that only notice what they've lost once it's already gone.

The people who taught me most in this industry were older technicians — people who had been doing this work for longer than I'd been alive, who could look at an object and instantly understand what it needed, who had developed a kind of technical intuition that only comes from years of accumulated experience. I owe them a lot.

But that knowledge transfer happened informally, incidentally, on the job. It was never structured. It was never guaranteed. And for every person like me who happened to be in the right place at the right time to absorb it, there are others who never got that opportunity.

That's not good enough anymore.

So what can organisations do right now, before the next retirement party?

Start documenting. It doesn't have to be complex or expensive. Ask your most experienced technicians to write down how they approach key tasks — packing a particular object type, installing with specific fixings, assessing condition. Not a formal manual, just a record. Something that exists outside of one person's head.

Create internal standards. Even a simple, agreed set of procedures for your most common tasks gives new and less experienced staff something to work from. It doesn't need to be perfect — it needs to exist.

Build knowledge transfer into your working practice. Pair experienced technicians with newer ones deliberately, not incidentally. Make the passing on of knowledge part of the job description, not an afterthought.

Invest in training before you need it. Not after someone has left, not when something has gone wrong — but as a regular, valued part of how your organisation develops its people.

And if you need support with any of this — developing training programmes, building internal standards, or simply working out where your gaps are — that's exactly what ArtTechSpace is here for.

Because the next retirement party is already being planned.

And the knowledge in that room won't wait.

What knowledge exists in your organisation that currently lives only in one or two people's heads? And what is your plan for when those people are no longer there?