Outsourced Technical Maintenance or an In-House Team? Doing the Maths Honestly

The "in-house team or outsourcing" debate usually starts by comparing a technician's salary with an external provider's invoice. That comparison is wrong on both sides — which is exactly why it is worth doing the maths properly.

What a salary line does not show

Pay is only the beginning of the list. Add social contributions and benefits, training and certifications (the systems a technician works on change faster than ever), tools and measurement instruments, a vehicle, a phone, and the most expensive item of all — absence. Holidays, sick leave, resignations. One technician is not "24/7 coverage"; it is 8/5 coverage minus holidays. Genuine round-the-clock readiness with in-house staff starts at several people rotating on call, and at that point the numbers look entirely different.

Then there is expertise: a single specialist will not be equally strong in building automation, networks, access control and backup power. They will be good at one of them and "manage somehow" with the rest — right up to the first serious failure in an area where they manage "somehow".

What outsourcing does not show either

To be fair: outsourcing has hidden costs too. The time it takes a provider to learn the specifics of your facility, dependence on an external company, staff turnover on their side. A badly drafted contract (we covered SLAs separately) can turn savings into frustration. And there is a limit to where it makes sense: a facility with its own large technical crew running specialised industrial installations may gain nothing from basic outsourcing.