Technician leaving employment: what do you need to arrange for certificates and the BRL 100 personnel file?

A technician who leaves is more than an HR change. His or her BRL 200 F-gas certificate, the link in the Centraal Register Techniek, and the entry in your BRL 100 personnel file all need to stay correct — otherwise you'll run into a finding at the next audit, or worse: on paper you'll be without enough certified personnel to carry out work that is already scheduled.

Does the certificate stay with the person or with the company?

The BRL 200 F-gas personal certificate is, as the name suggests, a personal certificate. It is not owned by your company and does not automatically lapse the moment someone leaves employment. The technician keeps the certificate and simply takes it along to a new employer, as long as it falls within the period of validity. That makes sense: the certificate demonstrates that the person has the knowledge and skills, not that your company does — that's exactly what the BRL 100 company certificate is for. See What is BRL 100, and why does it affect your work order? for the distinction between the two.

Important to realise: this means that a technician who leaves can, in theory, start work at a competitor immediately without having to sit the exam again. For your company, nothing changes about the certificate itself — but the question of whether you still have enough certified capacity left does change.

Updating the link in the Centraal Register Techniek (CRT)

F-gas certificates are registered in the Centraal Register Techniek (CRT), among other things via the Vakpaspoort. That register does not only record who holds a valid certificate, but in practice also which company a person is linked to — comparable to how that works for CO certification via the Vakpaspoort (see CO-person certificate). At an audit it is checked whether that link is still up to date.

In concrete terms, this means the following for a technician who leaves:

• Have the link between the technician and your company in the Vakpaspoort/CRT broken, or have the technician do this themselves — the app offers the option to (un)link yourself from a company for this
• If the link doesn't update automatically, contact the helpdesk of the Centraal Register Techniek to have this corrected manually
• Check for yourself that a departed technician doesn't still appear as an "actively linked staff member" in the register months later — that's exactly the kind of discrepancy that surfaces during a BRL 100 file check

We have not confirmed this one-to-one specifically for the F-gas link (the public documentation on this is thin), so if in doubt, check the current procedure directly with the CRT or your certifying body.

What you need to update in your BRL 100 personnel file

Your BRL 100 personnel file needs to contain an up-to-date overview of who is authorised to carry out certified work for you, with which certificate (soon increasingly category A1/A2/B/C/D/E instead of the old categories 1 to 4 — see New F-gas certification A1/A2/B/C 2026) and until when that is valid. When someone leaves employment, this includes at minimum:

• Remove the technician from the current personnel overview (with the date of leaving employment, not simply deleted — the auditor often wants to be able to follow a historical trail)
• Check whether the remaining staffing still has enough certified technicians for the work that is scheduled — with too few BRL 200-certified personnel you can no longer legally carry out certain assignments
• Transfer any authorisations that were linked to the person (for example access to the refrigerant logbook, see F-gas logbook: what needs to be in it?) to another responsible person
• Keep the departed technician's file for a further period — exactly how long is not unambiguously laid down in the BRL, so to be safe apply a retention period comparable to your other personnel and quality documentation

At the annual audit this personnel overview is usually spot-checked against the work orders — see The BRL 100 annual check: what the auditor expects. An expired or not-updated link between person and company is a classic finding.

Checklist: technician leaving employment

• Record the date of leaving employment in the BRL 100 personnel file
• Have the link in the Vakpaspoort/CRT adjusted or broken
• Revoke access to the refrigerant logbook, dashboard/work order software and other systems
• Check whether there are still ongoing STEK or BRL 100 obligations linked to this person (for example as the fixed executor of the annual leak check at specific customers)
• Assess the remaining staffing: do you still have enough certified capacity for the planned work, or do you need to temporarily outsource or postpone work?
• Inform customers for whom this technician was the fixed point of contact, if that is relevant for maintenance contracts

Hiring a replacement: points of attention

If you hire a new technician, the mirror image essentially applies:

• Request the BRL 200 certificate (and, if applicable, the CO-person certificate) straight away and check the validity date and the certificate number
• Link the new employee to your company in the Vakpaspoort/CRT
• Add the technician to the BRL 100 personnel overview, with certificate category and end date
• If the new technician does not yet have a certificate (for example an apprentice or a career switcher), make sure it is clear which tasks they may carry out independently and which only under the supervision of a certified colleague — and record that
• Plan re-examinations or additional categories in good time if the work package requires it (see Applying for an F-gas certificate: how it works)

Summary

You don't need to "arrange" the BRL 200 certificate itself when someone leaves — that simply stays with the person. What is your responsibility: keeping the link in the CRT/Vakpaspoort up to date, updating your BRL 100 personnel file, and ensuring that after the departure you can still demonstrably show enough certified capacity. That last point is often underestimated until an auditor or a customer explicitly asks about it.