Subcontract when the volume is uncertain or the geography is wide. Employ when the programme is long enough that quality and scheduling matter more than flexibility, and when you have somewhere for those people to go afterwards.
Most operators end up with both, and the ones who plan for that from the start do better than the ones who discover it.
What does each choice actually cost you?
Subcontracting buys speed and costs control. You get capacity without a hiring programme, you can flex it, and you can cover a wide geography without regional bases. What you give up is scheduling priority, consistency of workmanship across crews, and the institutional knowledge of how your own estate behaves. When a subcontractor is busy, you are one of several clients.
Employing buys control and costs time. You get consistent standards, people who learn your hardware, and a team available when you need it. What you give up is months of lead time before anyone lifts a tool, plus the obligation to keep them busy.
That last point is the one most often skipped. An employed installation team is a fixed cost against a build programme that is rarely smooth. Operators who employ and then hit a connection delay carry the crew through it.
At what volume does the answer change?
There is no clean threshold, but there is a reliable signal: when the same crews are working for you continuously for more than a few months, you are already paying the cost of employment without getting the benefit.
At that point you are funding a margin, carrying the scheduling risk anyway, and building none of the institutional knowledge. It is usually cheaper and better to bring some of it in-house and keep subcontract capacity for peaks and outlying geography.
Does the labour market make the decision for you?
Often, yes, and this is the part that should be checked before the commercial case is built.
Charge point installation is a genuine shortage occupation in parts of Europe. In Belgium the Flemish public employment service classifies it formally as a knelpuntberoep. One installation specialist there has been running near-identical installer adverts across at least ten regions at once, several open since December 2025.
If you are in a market like that, the choice is narrower than it looks. Deciding to employ does not conjure people into existence, and a plan that assumes you can hire a crew inside the programme is a plan with a hole in it. In those markets subcontracting is often not a preference but the only route to capacity in time, and the commercial question becomes how to secure it rather than whether to use it.
What about quality and rework?
This is where subcontracting genuinely costs money, and it is rarely priced in.
Charging is unusual in that the installation is not the end of the relationship. The units stay in the field, they need maintaining, and faults trace back to how they were put in. Rework on a dispersed estate is disproportionately expensive because the travel dominates the job.
Operators who subcontract and manage quality well do two things: they keep commissioning in-house even when installation is not, and they hold a small directly employed crew who set the standard and check the work. That combination is more common than either pure model.
What does it mean for the rest of the team?
It changes two other hires.
Commissioning becomes more important, not less. If installation is subcontracted, commissioning is where your standards are actually enforced. It also stops being nobody’s job, which is the default failure in this sector.
You need someone managing the subcontract relationship who understands the work rather than just the contract. A purely commercial relationship with an installation partner produces a purely commercial response when you need priority.
Frequently asked questions
Is subcontracting cheaper? Per install, usually. Across a programme, often not, once rework, scheduling risk and lost institutional knowledge are counted.
Can we start subcontracted and move in-house? Yes, and it is the most common path. Start building the employed crew before you need it rather than after, because the lead time is on the people.
Does it change how we handle warranty? It can. Manufacturer warranty terms sometimes turn on who installed and commissioned the unit and to what certification, which is worth reading before the model is chosen.
If you are weighing this up and want to know what capacity actually exists in your market, book a discovery call.
Sources
- VDAB knelpuntberoepen list, 2026
- Net Zero Evolution live vacancy analysis across the Belgian charging market, reviewed September 2026