The asset management profession is haemorrhaging its institutional memory - and no documentation program, AI tool, or training initiative can fully replace what is being lost. 25,000 engineers are set to retire within five years and apprentice completions are down 45% since 2012. It is a crisis unfolding in real time across every workshop, control room, and maintenance planning office.,

The knowledge most at risk cannot be written into a procedure manual. It is the engineer who recognises an abnormal bearing sound, the planner who recalls a supplier’s gaskets failing under specific conditions fifteen years ago, or the tradie veteran whose forty years of contextual judgement is about to walk out the door - and the twenty-three-year-old expected to fill that void with a YouTube video and a CMMS login.