Australia’s oil and gas sector has spent the better part of five years focused on the challenge of building things. Scarborough. Barossa. The North West Shelf life extension. Darwin LNG. The conversation has centred on construction workforces, trades pipelines, FIFO accommodation and the logistics of getting people to remote sites at scale.
That conversation is about to change. Scarborough is over 96% complete and targeting its first LNG cargo in Q4 2026. Barossa loaded its first cargo in January and is ramping toward full production capacity. The industry is transitioning, simultaneously across multiple major assets, from building to operating. And the workforce required for that transition is genuinely difficult to find.
Commissioning specialists, the professionals who bridge the gap between a completed construction project and a functioning production facility, are among the most sought-after and least abundant people in the energy sector right now. Understanding why that is, and what it means for projects and careers, matters for anyone with a stake in Australia’s current project pipeline.
Why Commissioning Is Its Own Discipline
Commissioning is not construction and it is not operations. It occupies a distinct phase of the project lifecycle that requires a specific combination of capabilities that most workers in either of those disciplines do not fully possess.
A commissioning engineer or technician needs to understand how a system was designed and built well enough to verify that it is performing as intended. They need to know how it will be expected to perform in steady-state operations well enough to identify deviations from that standard during testing. And they need to be able to work methodically under schedule pressure, in a partially live facility, often with incomplete documentation, while managing interfaces with multiple contractors, vendors and the operating team simultaneously.
That combination, technical depth across multiple disciplines, operational awareness, structured methodology and the temperament to work effectively under pressure in a high-stakes environment, takes years to develop. It cannot be adequately substituted with someone who is strong on the construction side but has never seen a facility commissioned, or someone with strong operations experience who has never been through a commissioning sequence from the other end.
The Supply Problem Is Structural
The pool of genuinely experienced commissioning professionals in Australian oil and gas has never been large. The nature of the work, project-based, cyclical, requiring specific combinations of discipline experience and operational exposure, means it has always been a specialist sub-market rather than a mainstream career pathway.
Several factors have made the supply situation worse over the past decade. The downturn period from 2015 to 2020, when major project activity contracted sharply, pushed a significant number of experienced commissioning professionals out of the sector entirely. Some took roles in adjacent industries. Some retired earlier than planned. Some moved to international projects. A meaningful proportion did not come back when activity resumed.
At the same time, the graduate and apprenticeship pipelines that were reduced during the downturn have not yet produced a sufficient cohort of mid-career professionals ready to step into senior commissioning roles. Industry research consistently identifies commissioning specialists as among the hardest roles to fill across all project types, with lead times for sourcing experienced candidates now averaging 60 to 90 days in competitive markets. In the current Australian environment, those timelines are often longer.
Multiple Projects Competing for the Same Pool
The timing of Australia’s current commissioning wave makes the supply problem significantly more acute. Scarborough and Barossa are not the only facilities requiring commissioning expertise in the same window. The North West Shelf brownfield program involves ongoing systems work. The Viva Energy LNG import terminal proposal in Geelong, if it progresses, will add further demand. And the renewables sector, which draws on many of the same instrument, electrical and control systems commissioning skills, is also hiring aggressively.
The practical consequence is that the people with the most relevant experience are already engaged or are receiving multiple approaches simultaneously. Projects that are slow to initiate their commissioning workforce strategy are not competing against a gap in the market. They are competing against other projects that started earlier.
This is not a situation where offering a higher rate solves the problem. As one analysis of the broader commissioning market noted, wage pressure in tight specialist markets moves workers between projects rather than creating new supply. The constraint is the number of people with the required experience, not the price at which they will work.
The Roles Under the Most Pressure
Not all commissioning roles are equally difficult to fill. The positions that are creating the most acute pressure across Australia’s current project pipeline include:
- Commissioning leads and superintendents with LNG or gas processing experience, the people responsible for planning and sequencing the commissioning program across complex, interdependent systems
- Operations readiness managers, specialists who prepare the operating organisation to receive the facility, including procedure development, training program design and operational philosophy documentation
- DCS and SCADA commissioning engineers, particularly those with experience on the specific vendor platforms used in LNG processing facilities
- Rotating equipment commissioning technicians with FPSO or onshore LNG experience
- Process safety engineers who can verify pre-startup safety reviews and manage the interface between construction completion and live operations
- Completions and handover coordinators, the role responsible for managing the documentation and sign-off process that formally transfers systems from construction to commissioning and then to operations
Each of these roles requires years of sector-specific experience that cannot be substituted with general engineering qualifications. They are also the roles most likely to be on the critical path of a commissioning schedule, meaning that a vacancy or an underqualified placement in any of them has direct schedule consequences.
What This Means for Operators
For operators and project organisations currently managing or planning commissioning programs, the implications are straightforward even if acting on them is not.
The assumption that commissioning workforce sourcing can be initiated when the construction phase is substantially complete is incorrect in the current market. By that point, the most experienced available candidates are already committed elsewhere. Commissioning workforce planning needs to begin at the same time as the broader project workforce strategy, not as a subsequent phase of it.
Pre-screening is more important at this phase than at almost any other. The consequences of placing an under-experienced commissioning engineer in a critical role on a live facility are not the same as placing an under-experienced construction worker on a civil works package. The risk profile is qualitatively different, and the due diligence applied to candidate assessment needs to reflect that.
Vendor and OEM engagement needs to be treated as part of the commissioning workforce plan. Specialist vendor technicians for key equipment are not always available on short notice, as Barossa’s experience with compressor dry seal replacements illustrated clearly. Pre-agreed mobilisation arrangements with critical equipment vendors should be locked in well before they are needed.
What This Means for Workers
For field technicians, engineers and technical specialists who have commissioning experience or who are looking to develop it, the current moment represents a genuine opportunity.
Workers who can demonstrate specific commissioning experience, whether through LNG projects, FPSO facilities, gas processing plants or major industrial facilities, are in a strong position in the current market. That experience does not need to be exclusively in oil and gas. Commissioning professionals who have worked across power generation, large-scale industrial processing or major infrastructure are increasingly valuable given the supply constraints in the sector-specific pool.
For workers who have strong operational or trades backgrounds but limited commissioning exposure, the path into commissioning typically runs through deliberate positioning rather than passive job searching. Seeking out step-up roles in commissioning support, engaging specialist placement partners who have genuine commissioning networks, and being transparent about the experience you have and the exposure you are seeking are all more effective than waiting for commissioning opportunities to come through standard channels.
The Window Is Now
Australia’s commissioning wave is already underway. Barossa is in early operations. Scarborough is weeks away from beginning commissioning sequences on systems that are mechanically complete. The demand for the right people is at its most acute right now, and it will remain elevated as the current wave of operational transitions continues through 2026 and into 2027.
For operators, that means workforce action is required immediately rather than at the next project planning review. For workers with relevant experience, it means the market is moving in your favour and the time to make yourself visible to the right partners is now rather than when you are between contracts. For both, the commissioning crunch is a present reality, not a coming one.
