Denise44

For all you electricians out there.

Do we need to have:

a Received the completed assessment of qualifications,

and

b Received your provisional licence from the EWRB

to submit your EOI. Or can you apply in advance of either a or b?

Does that make any sense?

Denise

Wholehog

I "think" you can apply with just the assesment, but i am not 100% sure as i didnt apply for my EOI until after i had full registration.

Soppydot4

Hi

Do you mean the assessment of qualifications from EWRB or NZQA?

We submitted our EOI without any mention of the provisional licence from the EWRB. You'll need your provisional licence or letter from the EWRB confirming the provisional licence will be granted for the ITA. We only had the letter and we were given a WTR visa.

Any questions please let me know. We've just completed the whole process which has given my OH his electrical registration and practising licence.

Denise44

Thanks Soppydot,

Rob is qualified by apprenticeship. Does your hubby have a City and Guilds?

I'm only concerned that we are entitled to claim the required points for his trade qualification?

Denise

PS Did your husband get a full licence or a provisional initially? Maybe you could talk me through the process if you have the time.

Thanks

alchris

My hubby is also an electrician and we have WTR. Once you start filling in your EOI it will automatically add up the points my hubby has City 'n Guilds
Initially you will only get a provisional licence- means sitting a Health and Saftey course and getting a job offer. You can only get a full licence once in NZ and depending on what the EWRB say by doing some courses at college. If you want PR as opposed to WTR then you will need to have a provisional licence otherwise you will only be granted a WTR by NZIS.
Happy to help you out if I can
Chris

Soppydot4

Hi Denise

We went through the NZQA process before submitting the EOI and my OH's qualification was through apprenticeship with City & Guilds which I'm sure came out as a level 4 (trade). I'm not sure whether the NZQA have caught up now but before Christmas alot of people had been waiting a long time to receive their assessment from the NZQA. Incidentally, I wouldn't waste time and money on a pre-assessment because a few people on here have ended up with different outcomes when they received their full assessment, just go straight for a full assessment.

In answer to your original question I'm not sure whether or not you have to go through the NZQA assessment before submitting the EOI but it will be needed for the ITA.

There is no way you can get full registration and practising license from the UK. There are at least 2 exams one practical and the other a regulations exam which have to be sat (these are taken in June and November of each year) and which can only be taken in NZ. The best you can get from the UK is a provisional licence which is good enough to get PR. Unfortunately our timing was out a little so when we returned our ITA we only had the letter from EWRB rather than the actual provisional licence. Therefore, NZIS gave us WTR under the Skilled Migrant Category which is different than the ordinary work to residence route. There was only a couple of weeks in it and my OH did have his provisional licence before leaving the UK but by then the NZIS had already issued work permits. Bit of a bummer but now 6 months down the line, he's sat and passed both exams and we had our passports returned with those lovely blue permanent residence stickers.

The process we followed regarding EWRB was as follows:-

1. Submitted OH's qualifications with application form (EWRB accepted them).
2. Submitted comprehensive work experience from employer - electrician requires 4 years work experience (EWRB accepted it).
3. OH took safety course with Nick Chandler in London (this can be done in NZ for around $80 (£300 in London)) You will need to do this in London if you want provisional licence before leaving the UK.
4. Received job offer.
5. Sent provisional licence application form and fee ($34 check with EWRB).
PROVISIONAL LICENCE OBTAINED
6. Took a week long course re: electricians regulations and then sat the exam.
7. Took a 3 day practical assessment course.
8. Paid $103 for registration and $62 for pro rata practising licence.
REGISTRATION AND PRACTISING LICENCE OBTAINED.

By the way, the places I spoke to regarding the courses and exams had sometimes wildly differing prices for the courses and exams and one actually wanted to charge us international student prices which were extortionate!!!!

If you have any other queries, you can either add it to this message or PM me and I'll give you my email address.

Apologies for the long messge but it is a rather complicated process to go through. Don't hesitate to ask questions, I wish there had been someone I could have asked.
Nic

Wholehog

Very good advice there, i was stung by the "international fees" myself, cost me nearly $4000 to get full registration as International. As i came to NZ without PR etc and figured i would get my Sparkies license first, not a good idea in hindsight, as not having PR means paying international fees.

Take my advice and don't try doing the sparkies course's without PR in NZ, too darn expensive (my overdraft still not recovered from it yet)!

Soppydot4

Hi Wholehog

We didn't have PR but managed to find a place in Mount Wellington, Auckland, who did the lot for $1,300. We weren't charged international student fees. You definitely need to shop around. Where did you do yours?

Wholehog

Hey

Tech College in Lower Hutt, they obviously saw me coming!
Ah well too late, but as you say def best to get a good deal.

Denise44

Hi All

I had a chat today with a very nice and helpful lady at New Zealand House. She confirmed that we do not need to have received either the assessment or the provisional licence to submit the EOI and are entitled to assume at this stage that Rob's qualification by apprenticeship is eligible for the points.

She did say that it is up to us if we take the risk that should the EWRB not assess his qualification positively and invite him to apply for his provisional licence we would not be able to evidence our claim at ITA stage and our application then may fail.

Given that we can think of no reason why the EWRB would not give a positive assessment to an SJIB Approved electrician with over 30 years experience on the tools we have submitted the EOI.

Wholehog

Sure your aware of this already Denise, but you will at some point need to prove that experience for at least four of those years. To some it is easy but i had 18years experience and had hell of a time proving it as majority of firms i worked for didnt exist anymore and others was hard to track down, i eventually tarcked down an old supervisor who did my experince proof but took several weeks to sort out.

Denise44

Thanks Wholehog.

He has worked for the same organisation for the last almost 15 years. His Department Head wrote him a very comprehensive reference for the EWRB which he related to the registration requirements. Hope that's enough.!


Denise

cheryl mac

Hi all - thanks for all the useful info!

Me and the hubby are currently completing our application. We have had our EOI accepted and got the full pack, now we need to prove what we have said!

My hubby is an Electrician and as we dont have a job offer we are going for th work to residence visa - so we just need the letter from the EWRB stating his quals are ok and we can apply for prov licence when we are in NZ.

How do you get the quals assessed, does anyone know?

The website and various other people state that we need to send certified copies of the certs and work experience letters covering 4 years to the address in Wellington but is it that simple? No charge? Any idea how long it takes them?

We have 4 months to lodge app before we have to start over and have lost a month already.... streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeess!

Ta for your help

Soppydot4

The website you need is www.EWRB.govt.nz. I'll post a link to a page which explains what you need to do know including having qualifications assessed.

Hope it helps. If you need anything else. Please ask.

http://www.ewrb.govt.nz/content/info...pplicants.html

Denise44

Hi

We're in the same process. We have been told the assessment can take up to 8 weeks. Once the office staff have done their bit then it needs to go to the Board, which only meets once a month (next one 24th April). You can find the Board dates on the "What's New" page on their website.

Just one tip. Make sure the work references are really, really detailed.

Oh, and they only accept information by snail mail:curse:

Denise