JCh4rles

Hi All,

I have a question about starting up a business but first I'll give you a quick introduction that could help with some answers.

Myself and my wife are heading over to Australia(Victoria) around Christmas on a 'Skilled Migrants' visa. We are coming through my wife's "skill" (secondary English teacher) as it made the process slightly easier than us both getting our skills attested.

I am a British qualified plumber who has been out to Victoria previously on a WHV so have some knowledge how of the trade out there works etc. My main question is, could I start a plumbing/gas business without getting my skills attested at all? Just to clear things up, I do not plan to do any practical work - I would employ fully qualified Australian personnel to do the work. I would basically run the admin side of things, plus the estimating etc.

Just to make another point I'm not currently living in the UK so can't get my skills attested there, if I HAD to do it then it would have to be on arrival in Aus.

Thanks for any input

Jeremy

old.sparkles

I don't think that you can do estimating even without a license but check with VBA

You can get skills assessed in Australia by Vetassess or similar, but even then I believe you face the same issues as sparks - gap training and supervised employment

Buzzy--Bee

I don't see any reason why you couldn't as plumbers have to certify work at completion, so if you were employing fully qualified plumbers they could certify it. I have to ask though - where do you feel you would be adding value over someone just booking a plumber?

BB

JCh4rles

Thanks both for your responses.

BB - It is still early days as far as my idea goes at the minute as I'm stuck here in Dubai for a while so I have plenty of time to think of crazy ideas for when I arrive. I have started a website etc - the idea goes along the 'Rated People' lines. So essentially I could either 'try' to operate as an agency type company, where I offer plumbers or I could set up a website for customers to advertise their jobs and then registered plumbers(that have signed up to me for a small monthly fee) from that area get the chance to do a quote for the advertised job.

I understand I need to change it slightly from the way Rated People works, as to not break copyright laws but I have a million ideas at the minute.

Jeremy

Buzzy--Bee

I think there are some websites already that offer that kind of service, so I guess yours would have to be different in some way.

eg https://www.servicecentral.com.au/

I lecture in Owner Building among other things, and have some experience in employing trades. The public's biggest worry about employing tradespeople, is being ripped off by someone doing a poor job, or extra work that doesn't need doing, and being spoken to condescendingly by tradespeople in a language they don't understand. So if you could set up a business where people could be convinced they were employing good reliable tradespeople who weren't going to rip them off and were going to interact with them in a friendly professional way I guess you would have an edge.

BB