Your article "The Techmeisters" (26 September, page 74) was either written with tongue firmly in cheek or you fell under the spell of snake oil salesmen intent on cornering a market.
It's an old ploy, but if you can persuade customers that you are a unique supplier of a service essential to them and that it is too complicated for them to understand, then you are onto a winner. In other words, I think there has been a lot of special pleading going on. I suggest, therefore, that there is really no need for serious concern and that while, undoubtedly, there will be some M&E contractors that do not have the necessary expertise to deal with the new integrated communication and control technologies, there certainly is no need to invent a new specialist subcontractor to get the work done satisfactorily.

Many well-known M&E contractors, like my own, are well equipped to provide the required service. They do so by ensuring that the in-house design team – and ours includes dedicated controls engineers – updates its skills through continuous professional development, and that the site management and construction teams are equally well trained.

M&E contractors have seen many significant changes in the industry over the past 30 years and have been able to take these in their stride. This latest "challenge" is unlikely to cause the competent ones to trip, so let us not create problems where they do not exist, and let us rely on the good sense of competent builders and their clients to know which M&E contractors are keeping up with the game.

Postscript

E Innes, chief design engineer, Shepherd Engineering Services, York.