Unlocking Operational Resilience: Reducing Costs and Retaining Critical Knowledge
Here’s a novel thought: expertise should not be restricted by flight schedules and long waits.
After years of working with commercial and government clients, we know how valuable technical expertise is to large organizations and global corporations. Experienced engineers and technicians are thin on the ground, and too often, they’re based at global or regional headquarters. Yet, their skills are needed across the organization’s entire footprint, often spanning oceans and remote territories.
These experts are needed globally, often in two places at once. They spend too much of their time on airplanes or in transit, and over the years all that travel takes its toll. They burn out. They retire. While excessive travel eats up budget and staff time, the real risk is that it encourages specialists to leave the workforce permanently, taking their decades of experience with them.
That’s why organizations need a better approach.
The fact is that sending experts to remote sites is a costly, slow, and increasingly impractical practice. RemoteSpark addresses this challenge head-on. But more crucially it helps to retain knowledge within a company or organization in two ways. First, it eases the travel burden on your seasoned experts. Second, it fosters knowledge transfer. Every time a remote expert supports a frontline worker, they’re not just solving a problem they’re teaching. Over time, you build a more capable, distributed workforce, less reliant on a few specialists at headquarters and more resilient everywhere.
The Burden of Expert Travel
The reality is that many organizations still rely too much on a few key experts. We’re talking about senior engineers and technicians, the people who can fix problems better and faster than anyone else because of their familiarity with the equipment and infrastructure. Maybe they’re charged with inspections or certifying your equipment. And for decades, companies have flown them across regions and continents to perform these tasks in person.
But this approach is continually becoming hard to maintain. Organizations need to move beyond relying solely on travel to solve technical challenges.
Air travel is a nightmare these days. And the farther you go, the more of a hassle it is. Cramped seats. Jet lag. Missed connections. And the ever-present risk of lost luggage. Business travel company TravelPerk has released data saying that globally 37 percent of flights were delayed in 2024. (It also said Canada had the second-worst record of flight cancellations in the world, with 3.4 percent of the flights scrapped.) It’s no wonder that experienced staff, many of whom are in the late years of their careers, are reluctant to travel. And every delay isn’t just an inconvenience for the individual; it directly impacts operations, project timelines, and budgets.
Let’s say your headquarters is in North America, and your senior engineer had to visit a plant anywhere in Europe on Friday, March 21 2025, passing through Europe’s busiest airport, London Heathrow. It turned out that a fire at a power facility knocked out the airport’s systems for a day. More than 1,300 flights were canceled or rerouted, and almost 200,000 customers faced serious disruption. Your engineer would have faced multi-day delays, adding stress to an already critical situation.
There is a better way, one that avoids these risks.
The 21st Century Solution
A modern solution to this challenge is a worker support platform like RemoteSpark. Purpose-built for low-bandwidth environments, RemoteSpark enables secure, real-time collaboration between experts and frontline workers, even in the most remote and digitally stressed locations. Running on augmented reality smart glasses or headsets, the platform allows both parties to view the equipment being worked on while keeping the frontline worker’s hands free to complete the task. Experts can also share manuals, schematics, annotated images, and other critical resources directly into the worker’s field of vision, supporting efficient, hands-on problem-solving without the need for travel.
Consider a typical scenario. Suppose a senior engineer in New Orleans needs to travel to Hamburg to address an issue with a crane at a container terminal. Under optimal conditions, the flight costs more than $1,000 for an economy seat and involves over 15 hours of travel time each way. This engineer would spend one exhausting day flying in, perform the task, and then spend another day flying back. Maybe they could squeeze in other work while overseas, but realistically, two days are lost to travel, leaving them tired and less productive upon return.
With RemoteSpark, that same engineer stays at their headquarters, equipped with all necessary resources. The expert and a junior engineer in Hamburg equipped with RemoteSpark can collaborate remotely. Together, they inspect the crane, sharing the same visual information. The on-site worker’s hands remain free to carry out the repair under direct guidance. What would have consumed multiple days and thousands of dollars can now be resolved in just a few hours, freeing the senior engineer to assist additional teams elsewhere that same day.
The cost savings are significant, eliminating flights, hotels, meals, and taxis. And that’s before even considering the added financial impact of equipment downtime and the associated operational delays that often accompany travel-dependent troubleshooting, which can range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands per hour. More importantly, this approach leaves a lasting impact. Each successful remote session builds local capability, reduces future dependence on travel, and helps organizations retain and distribute critical expertise across their entire footprint.
Expertise Without Limits and Without Travel
Senior engineers and technicians are essential to the efficient operation of industrial companies, yet no organization ever seems to have enough of them. And they’re getting rarer. In the U.S., economists have coined the term “peak 65” which means the wave of Baby Boomers reaching their 65th birthday is cresting. According to the Retirement Income Institute, more than 11,200 Americans will turn 65 every day from 2024 through 2027. That’s 4.1 million people a year in the U.S. alone who could soon retire, widening the knowledge gap at organizations and corporations.
Retaining experienced workers has never been more important, and protecting them from the fatigue of constant travel is one way to do so. While enterprises will never eliminate travel entirely, worker support solutions like RemoteSpark offer meaningful relief from the grind of long-haul travel. Reducing unnecessary travel improves job satisfaction, supports retention, and ensures organizations get the most from their limited expert resources.
Just as important is the impact on the next generation of workers. In the earlier example, had the senior engineer flown to Hamburg, the local junior engineer might have observed the task from a distance or been uninvolved entirely. But with RemoteSpark, they became an active participant, completing the work under direct guidance. The worker now has both the experience and ongoing access to the reference materials through RemoteSpark, enabling them to confidently repeat the task when needed without calling in additional help.
The benefits don’t stop there. Freed from travel constraints, the senior engineer could support teams not only in Hamburg but in Singapore, Halifax, and Buenos Aires all in the same day. RemoteSpark turns every support call into an opportunity for mentorship, skill-building, and knowledge transfer. It equips younger workers to take on more responsibility, while allowing senior experts to scale their impact across the organization without ever leaving their desk.
Companies That Adapt Now Win Later
RemoteSpark is already delivering results for some of the world’s most advanced industrial organizations. For companies looking to stay competitive, now is the time to move beyond the travel-reliant model and embrace remote expertise solutions.
This is not a temporary fix, it is a long-term, strategic shift toward operational excellence. By reducing the burden on your senior experts, accelerating knowledge transfer, and building a more capable frontline workforce, organizations can protect institutional knowledge while preparing the next generation of engineers and technicians.
Those who act now will not only reduce costs they will build a more agile, resilient, and future-ready operation.
Want to see how this could work for your organization? Get in touch with our team to explore how RemoteSpark can help you reduce travel, retain critical knowledge, and strengthen your frontline workforce.