One of the greatest challenges facing the plumbing and HVAC industries is the ever-widening skills gap. As more and more industry veterans retire, the demand for plumbing and HVAC services continues to outpace the number of people entering the industry.
One often-overlooked strategy is “growing your own techs” — developing and nurturing talent from within your company. When Nexstar Network contractors complained they couldn’t find talent for the better part of a decade, the best practices organization decided to do something about it. Nexstar Network hired a plumbing coach and HVAC coach in 2017 to begin curriculum development for the launch of Nexstar’s NexTech Academy, which went live in May 2018 with plumbing, then followed with HVAC in August 2018. Electrical was added a year later.