One of the biggest long-term risks facing the lifting industry may not be equipment failure, supply chain disruption, or even regulation.
It may be knowledge loss.
Across heavy industry, a quiet but significant shift is already underway. Experienced professionals are approaching retirement while fewer younger workers are entering technical industries at the same pace. Skilled inspectors, riggers, crane operators, lifting supervisors, engineers, and compliance specialists remain essential to safe lifting operations - yet many businesses are already struggling with recruitment and retention pressures.
This challenge is not unique to lifting.
Construction, manufacturing, logistics, infrastructure, offshore energy, and engineering sectors are all facing growing workforce shortages. According to a report by PwC, one in five UK workers could be over the age of 65 by 2035, while many industrial sectors continue to face widening technical skills gaps.
But within lifting operations, the problem carries particular significance.
Because lifting remains fundamentally dependent on human judgement.
THE INDUSTRY WAS BUILT ON EXPERIENCE
For decades, the lifting industry has relied heavily on practical operational knowledge developed over years of real-world experience.
That expertise is difficult to replicate quickly.
Much of the industry’s most valuable knowledge is not purely theoretical. It is situational, experience-based, and developed through exposure to complex operational environments over long periods of time.
Experienced lifting professionals understand things that cannot always be captured fully in manuals or regulations:
- How loads behave under changing conditions
- How environmental factors affect lifting operations
- How to recognise subtle warning signs before problems emerge
- How to make safe operational decisions under pressure
- How to adapt lift planning to unpredictable site conditions
- How to manage risk dynamically in real time
This kind of operational judgement is built gradually through repetition, observation, and experience.
And as experienced personnel leave the industry, there is a growing risk that significant amounts of that knowledge leave with them.
THE INDUSTRY IS BECOMING MORE COMPLEX - NOT LESS
At the same time, lifting operations themselves are becoming increasingly complex.
As we have explored throughout this Future of Lifting series, the industry is entering a period shaped by:
- Digitisation
- Automation
- Connected infrastructure
- Predictive maintenance
- Real-time compliance systems
- Operational analytics
- Intelligent lifting equipment
This creates an unusual challenge.
The future workforce will likely require a broader and more hybrid skill set than previous generations.
Traditional lifting expertise will remain critically important.
But businesses may also increasingly require personnel comfortable with:
- Digital asset management systems
- Connected equipment infrastructure
- Operational data interpretation
- Cloud-based compliance systems
- Predictive maintenance software
- Automation oversight
- Sensor diagnostics
- Remote operational platforms
The lifting engineer of the future may look very different from the lifting engineer of the past.
THE INDUSTRY FACES A DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE GAP
One of the most difficult aspects of the skills crisis is that industrial expertise cannot easily be accelerated.
Training someone to operate safely within lifting environments takes time.
Training someone to think critically under operational pressure takes even longer.
This creates a dangerous gap between workforce turnover and knowledge replacement.
Businesses may find themselves facing situations where:
- Senior expertise becomes increasingly concentrated among fewer individuals
- Inspection resources become overstretched
- Compliance responsibilities increase
- Operational complexity rises
- Younger personnel have fewer opportunities for practical mentoring
This combination creates operational risk.
Because while lifting equipment itself continues to evolve technologically, the industry still fundamentally depends on human capability to apply that technology safely and effectively.
TECHNOLOGY MAY BECOME ESSENTIAL TO MAINTAINING STANDARDS
This is where technology may increasingly become part of the solution.
Importantly, technology should not be viewed as replacing expertise.
In safety-critical industries, human judgement will remain essential.
But technology may help businesses preserve operational standards, improve consistency, reduce administrative burden, and support knowledge transfer more effectively.
That distinction matters enormously.
The most valuable technologies may not be those attempting to remove human involvement entirely.
They may be the technologies that help experienced personnel operate more effectively while supporting less experienced workers more consistently.
AI-ASSISTED INSPECTION COULD IMPROVE CONSISTENCY
Inspection processes provide a useful example.
Traditionally, inspections rely heavily on individual experience and manual observation. Skilled inspectors develop the ability to recognise wear patterns, operational abnormalities, and subtle signs of deterioration through years of practical exposure.
Future inspection systems may increasingly support that process through AI-assisted diagnostics and intelligent inspection tools.
For example, future systems may be capable of:
- Identifying common wear indicators automatically
- Flagging potentially non-compliant configurations
- Recognising corrosion patterns
- Detecting abnormal operational data
- Recommending maintenance actions based on historical records
- Comparing inspection results across large asset inventories
This does not eliminate the need for experienced inspectors.
But it may help standardise processes, improve consistency, and reduce the likelihood of human oversight errors - particularly in environments where experienced personnel are increasingly stretched.
DIGITAL SYSTEMS COULD HELP SCALE EXPERTISE
One of the most valuable developments may involve the ability to distribute expertise more effectively across operations.
Historically, senior lifting expertise has often been site-dependent.
A highly experienced engineer or inspector could only physically oversee a limited number of locations at one time.
Connected systems may begin changing that.
Digital compliance platforms, remote operational support systems, cloud-based asset management, and connected lifting infrastructure could allow experienced personnel to oversee multiple sites simultaneously with far greater visibility.
This could become particularly valuable in industries managing geographically distributed operations such as:
- Offshore energy
- Infrastructure projects
- Logistics networks
- Manufacturing groups
- Utilities
- Ports and terminals
In these environments, operational visibility may help businesses make better use of increasingly limited specialist resources.
TRAINING MODELS MAY EVOLVE DRAMATICALLY
Training itself may also undergo significant transformation over the next decade.
Historically, lifting training has often relied heavily on classroom-based instruction, paper documentation, and practical on-site exposure.
Those elements will always remain important.
But future training environments may increasingly incorporate:
- Digital simulation platforms
- Interactive inspection systems
- Remote learning environments
- Augmented reality guidance tools
- VR-based lifting simulations
- AI-assisted competency assessment
- Real-time operational analytics
Other industries are already moving in this direction.
Aviation, manufacturing, defence, and logistics sectors increasingly use simulation-based training environments to accelerate practical learning while improving safety and consistency.
The lifting industry may gradually adopt similar approaches.
This could help newer workers gain exposure to complex operational scenarios more quickly while reducing reliance on purely paper-based learning systems.
YOUNGER WORKERS EXPECT DIFFERENT OPERATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS
Another important factor is workforce expectation itself.
Younger workers entering technical industries increasingly expect modern operational systems.
Paper-heavy workflows, fragmented administration, and disconnected operational processes may appear outdated to digitally native generations accustomed to connected technologies elsewhere in their lives.
This matters because recruitment itself is becoming increasingly competitive.
Industries that modernise operational systems may become more attractive to technically capable younger workers.
Businesses embracing:
- Digital infrastructure
- Intelligent systems
- Modern operational technology
- Better training tools
- Streamlined compliance systems
may ultimately position themselves more effectively for long-term workforce recruitment and retention.
That could become a significant competitive advantage over time.
THE RISK IS NOT JUST LABOUR SHORTAGE - IT IS OPERATIONAL DEGRADATION
One of the biggest dangers surrounding the skills crisis is that businesses often frame it purely as a recruitment issue.
In reality, it is potentially much larger than that.
The real risk is operational degradation.
If experienced expertise declines faster than knowledge transfer occurs, businesses may eventually face:
- Reduced inspection quality
- Increased operational inconsistency
- Poorer risk management
- Greater compliance exposure
- Slower project delivery
- Increased downtime
- Higher incident risk
This is why the skills crisis should not be viewed separately from wider industry transformation.
It is directly connected to how lifting operations evolve operationally over the next decade.
THE MOST RESILIENT BUSINESSES WILL COMBINE EXPERIENCE WITH TECHNOLOGY
Perhaps the most important point is this:
Technology alone will not solve the industry’s skills challenges.
And experience alone may not be enough either.
The businesses most likely to succeed over the next decade will probably be those capable of combining both.
Operational experience remains irreplaceable.
Engineering judgement remains essential.
Situational awareness remains critical.
But connected systems, intelligent infrastructure, digital compliance tools, predictive diagnostics, and AI-assisted operational support may help businesses preserve standards while adapting to changing workforce realities.
This is not about replacing human expertise.
It is about scaling it more effectively.
THE FUTURE WORKFORCE WILL LIKELY BE HYBRID
The future lifting workforce may ultimately become increasingly hybrid in nature.
Tomorrow’s lifting professionals may require a combination of:
- Traditional rigging and lifting expertise
- Engineering understanding
- Digital systems literacy
- Operational analytics capability
- Compliance management knowledge
- Automation oversight awareness
- Connected infrastructure understanding
That represents a major cultural and operational shift for the industry.
But it may also create opportunity.
The lifting industry has historically been perceived as highly traditional. Businesses that modernise operations and embrace technology may not only improve efficiency — they may also help reposition the sector as a more attractive long-term career environment for technically skilled younger workers.
THE INDUSTRY IS ENTERING A KNOWLEDGE TRANSITION
Every major industrial transformation eventually becomes a people challenge.
Technology can improve systems.
Automation can improve consistency.
Connected infrastructure can improve visibility.
But industries ultimately succeed or fail based on their ability to preserve, transfer, and evolve expertise.
The lifting industry is now entering that transition period.
Over the next decade, operational resilience may depend less on equipment strength alone and more on how effectively businesses combine:
- Human expertise
- Digital systems
- Operational intelligence
- Connected infrastructure
- Knowledge transfer
- Workforce development
The future of lifting will not simply be defined by larger lifting capacities or smarter equipment.
It will increasingly be shaped by the industry’s ability to evolve its workforce alongside rapidly changing industrial expectations.
That future is already beginning to emerge.
The Future of Lifting series explored how digitisation, automation, operational intelligence, sustainability, and workforce transformation are reshaping the lifting industry. While many of these changes are still emerging, the direction of travel is becoming increasingly clear: lifting operations are entering a far more connected, intelligent, and data-driven era.