UK Electricians on a Provisional Electricians Licence.

[Guest Glen Quincey]

Hi All!

 

I am currently going through the motions of gaining my licence in WA and would like to start a dedicated Electricians thread to help assist both locals and those looking at making the move. This hopefully will save us all a bit of time and get us all qualified that much sooner!!

 

Please add and/or revise anything you feel may be beneficial to the Expat Sparks!

 

So here is how things stand:

 

Arrive in Perth and apply for your Provisional Licence.

Find work with an Electrical Contractor.

Apply for your logbook through e-Profiling.

Register with a TAFE (Part A 2 weeks, Part B 1 week and now Part 3 Comms Licence 1 week)

Pass College and gain Level 3 Cert, complete 1000hrs in your log book.

Apply for WA Licence.

 

Happy days, you are now a recognised Electrician once again, depending on hours worked you can get this whole process done within 9 months apparently, but you should factor in for at least a year.

 

Regarding employment, there appears to be a lot more mention of work for Unlicenced/Provisional Electricians over East, not saying there is more work there, just that they appear to have taken on board the new process for foreign Sparkies. To date I have not spoken to many contractors/employment agents who are up to speed with the whole Provisional Licence thus far in Perth.

 

This being said, the best way of getting started on your new journey is to apply for Electrical Trade Assistant Jobs, even these require a number of local courses/tickets too. The list is exhaustive however as a start they all seem to be after the following:

 

White Card

EWP

Forklift

Working at Heights

Confined Spaces

 

Having these will not assure you of work but they can help. (Depending on who you are employed by, they may put you through a number of these.) Other than that you may have to find work as a labourer pending finding TA work, so be prepared to get stuck in, hard hat, steel toe boots, hi vis, own transport and a white card should be sufficient.

 

Websites:

 

seek

indeed

trovit

byron

gumtree

hays

google: electrical trade recruitment

be part of something big

wheatstone

 

 

Register, get the persons name and email and keep hounding them, they will try to tell you to apply online and they will get back to you, never to be heard from again! Even if you apply, always ring to confirm they have your resume etc or you will just be left in an inbox gathering dust.

 

That is about it from me for now, all the best!

 

Regards,

 

Glen

[Claudette]

Great advice Glen. Thanks. We're heading over in a couple of months and OH has to start all of this.

We have friends over there who are also sparks so along with your information and their hands on experience, hopefully it will make sense to us when we get there!

[Loulou]

Great advice Glen. Thanks. We're heading over in a couple of months and OH has to start all of this.

We have friends over there who are also sparks so along with your information and their hands on experience, hopefully it will make sense to us when we get there!

 

Any of your friends looking for a spark ? My OH looking for a new job current one too inconsistent only had 1 day this week. :-/

[Dave Pistol]

Hi I'm currently working on a provisional licence, is it correct you need 1000 hours in your e-profiling log book before you can go to part B of the course? I started my log book in March and have probably already got that many hours. I do my part A in September.

[no1mum]

HI Glenn, when you state apply for your provisional licence do you mean the ARTC? Reason for asking is my OH is in the process of applying for ARTC and ridicious amount of paperwork needed even for that. If not ARTC what is the provisional licence and where do you obtain it from. We made enquiries at Energy Safety WA and the ARTC was the route they said we had to take. A good idea to start this thread thought as quite complex process for people who may have done their uk qualifications and apprenticeship over25 years ago.