British Expats - employment help

Quote:

Originally Posted by brett

Hi, i am a gas engineer working for British Gas in the UK and am hoping to immigrate to melbourne and would like to know of any information anyone who works in the plumbing/gasfitter area could pass on as regards to registering and employment upon arrival.
Thanks
Brett :)

Hi Brett,

Have a look at www.pic.vic.gov.au - you will have to have registration or provisional registration in the categories you want to work in before being employed.

The provisional registration is where previous plumbing skills are recognised but you still take Australian exams. What happened in my partner's case (he's a plumber) is that he got forms to apply for registration from the Plumbing Industry Commission (www.pic.vic.gov.au). He then sent the forms and originals of his trade certificates to them and they decided to grant the provisional registration and also which categories to grant it in.

If you go to their website on the Registration and Licence page there is a link for people applying from outside Australia and NZ - click on England and there is a table showing what UK qualifications entitle you to be registered in what here. You may find that you get granted full registration straight away but they seem quite keen on getting as much money out of you as possible so tend to grant provisional in the first instance and get you to sit the exams.

The books needed to sit the exams are available to buy from the PIC and they can advise you as to which ones you need for each exam. Their main office is in Melbourne and you can email enquiries to [email protected] or call on +61 3 98892211. We did most of it by email and they are pretty helpful although didn't ever warn us about needing lots of books or waiting to sit exams until we got here. I guess knowing what I do now I would have ordered the books before getting here.

The main difference between Provisional Reg. and full reg. which is a pain employment-wise is that your employer is responsible for checking ALL your work if you have prov. reg. and obviously most employers could do without the hassel and go for fully registered employees over prov. registered. We were very lucky in that my partner's employers took him on with prov. Reg.

Anyway, once you have found work another option is to work for yourself - in which case you need a license so the way it works (as far as I understand) is:

Provisional Registration: Enables you to work for an employer who is responsible for checking all your work

Registration: Enables you to work for an employer

License: Enables you to work for yourself, sign off your own work and employ others

I hope this is of some help - it's only relevant to Victoria though :rolleyes: