garyanderson929

My little family and I are currently in the early stages of planning a move from Portsmouth GB to Lake Annecy area. We have been visiting France for years, summer and winter, car, motorbike and now family camper. Our favourite place is Lake Annecy. We enjoy the lakes and mountains and would love to make it our home. Our children are 6 and 2.

We are to trying put together a plan to make our dreams come true, but firstly and most importantly I will need to find work, so I would like to make contact with anybody who has connections in the construction trade.
I would be very grateful for any advice on how to advertise myself and show my availability and services to the expat community.

I am an architectural technician / designer. I have been doing my job for over 30 years. I have worked for small architectural practices, Large engineering firms and have successfully run my own business, I have worked in the UK and overseas.
I have varied background / experience and have been fortunate to work in most areas of my industry ie. Residential, healthcare, industrial, pharmaceutical, oil and gas, refinery, luxury Caribbean accommodation, education as well as plenty of domestic type work, including new build houses, extensions, refurbishments and loft conversions.
I can confidently turn my hand to any type of project.
I am familiar and fluent with most CAD software 2D and 3D.

My wife also, would like to work. She currently works for local government, in social care for young people. She is amazing at her job and could easily turn her hand to all manor of work involving young people.

I hope my post is detailed enough to arouse some interest but brief enough so as not to bore.

We are currently advancing our French language skills on a daily basis, we are keen to commit and ready to live our dream.

thanks in advance for any help and advice.

Regards

Gary

dmu

Hi, and welcome to the forum!
The good news is that your children would go to State Maternelle and Primaire and soon speak French like their peers and later be entirely bilingual.
Otherwise you've got lots of research before then. Check that your respective qualifications are recognized in France.
You yourself need the "équivalence" to be able to set up a business structure, get professional insurance and "sign off" your work. You should check on French Norms which are often different from the UK. It wouldn't be advisable to target only the expat community. Some one in the Annecy area will come along to advise on the potential clientèle...
I imagine that, without being fairly fluent in French, your wife would have difficulty finding a job in her field. Communication with the young in their strange language is bad enough for French people! Be aware that, although the latest figures say that unemployment has gone down slightly, it's still much higher than in the UK, and any one wishing to work in the public sector (social care, non-teaching school jobs) is faced with stiff competition from the locals for any jobs going. Being a native English-speaker wouldn't be an advantage, since Anglophone children wouldn't normally be needing the care that your wife could give, and an equally qualified French person would be selected.
Sorry to put a damper on your dream, but I'm realistic. If you were simply a couple, I'd say go for it, but with two young children in tow....
As I'm wont to say, Fore-warned is fore-armed!
Why not buy a holiday home and come over regularly, learn French (all of you), and decide in a couple of years' time (while the children are still at Primaire age)?

EuroTrash

That's the best way to prepare, IMHO , it's how I did it.

Lake Annecy is a lovely area, but one of the more expensive parts of France to live in, I would imagine.

If you already run your own consultancy, presumably you can transfer this to France, set it up as a French business structure and bring your clients with you. If you work internationally, being based in France rather than the UK shouldn't make any difference should it, apart from that you need to be prepared for your profit margins to be squeezed a little, due to the higher cotisations in France.

As dmu says, you'll need to swot up on the French construction normes before you start undertaking work in France, and I'm not sure how you would stand as regards qualifications before you could offer your services in France, that's something for you to find out.

Received wisdom among expats is that it's unwise to rely on the expat market for a living. It's finite, it's fickle, and the more 'integrated' expats will consciously prefer to use French professionals because they trust them to have a better understanding of French normes, more experience of dealing with French bureaucracy, closer relationships and more clout with local providers, etc. Plus it has to be said, expats in the construction trade don't have the best of reputations, there have been notorious cases of them taking clients' money, going bust and vanishing into thin air, so you may find a certain amount of prejudice in some quarters. Saying that, expat clients are also capable of commissioning ambitious work, then the dream goes sour and they vanish without paying their bills. It's not the norm but it happens, you have to be a bit careful.

Bearing all this in mind, why not transfer your business here and continue to focus on the international market, including the UK, and feel your way into the French market as you become more knowledgable and confident about French normes and business practices.

As DMU says, language fluency will be a big factor in your wife's employment prospects, and also, France's approach to youth social care is not the same as in the UK. There are the same problems of course but society sees things a bit differently. There's plenty of reading matter on the internet about France's youth policies and provisions, eg http://www.jeunes.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/CI...artie2_BD7.pdf which your wife might find interesting. If she acquires sufficient mastery of the language and wants to stay in this line of work, I imagine some retraining would be necessary - again, something for you to find out. I wonder how difficult it might be for her to change her mindset though; it might go against the grain to have to switch to the French approach, if she firmly believes the UK approach is best.

Hopefully there's some food for thought in there, and good luck with your project.

EuroTrash

A random thought - maybe your wife could find paid or voluntary work in a local school, giving the kids extra help with their English. Quite a lot of expat mums do that and seem to enjoy it.

dmu

I was an "intervenante" at our village Primaire, but the Académie's Inspector didn't think I was "pédagogique" enough to qualify for fees (the kids enjoyed my "lessons", though...). There used to be organized Homework Help after school by volunteers, but there was only French and Maths homework in Primaire.
I also coached DDs' Collège and Lycée pals, but you do have to have a good knowledge of French Grammatical terms to explain what their English teachers didn't have time to explain in class. Thanks to DDs' Primaire years, I knew all the expressions, and, as DDs were obviously doing the same Curricula, knew what the teachers expected of their pupils in order to pass exams.
The OP's wife could ask at their children's Primaire about being an intervenante in English, follow their French Grammatical Analysis over the years and coach older children when she feels confident!