Oh, this exam. I really don't understand. I literally had to memorise 300 pages of regs and 6 other little books worth of stuff of which, in nearly 20 years, I have only come accross about 5% of what they were asking about. There are some insanely irrelevant stuff in that exam. Things I had never even seen. 138 people took the exam the day I took it and only 2 passed. I scrapped through with 50% on one of the papers. The regs book is a reference book. When in doubt, you refer to it. The crazy process for me as an English sparks getting my wiremans licences sorted over here was a joke, a complete F&^%()g joke. I have JIB grading of Site technician in the UK(the highest you can go) and have been working for 17 years in England and have worked in Australia and New Zealand. Yet you come here and they want you charge you R12000 for trade test preparation so you can go bend conduit in a little cubicle! I had just come from working on a £40,000,000 project. If you try and just register yourself for a trade test you have to wait a YEAR!! It was quicker to go back to the UK and redo my appy stuff there. As for the unit standards for testing, B*&^&^IT. The people who they passed where I went to do it were no way competent testers, I had to hit one guy with a broom because he was about to stick his hand in a bus bar chamber. The system here is nuts. You still have peopel with licences signing of any old shit without even looking at it no matter testing it. Its at the point where I don't do COc on domestics unless I have wired teh whole place myself. It ain't worth the hassel and you'll always be signing of someone elses shit and beside they are not going to pay you a fair price to test it when someone else will just sign it off for R600. I got a text from some one the other day called Ian saying will do COC's fro R600. How can you even give a price befor you have even seen the size of the place and number fo circuits. Hi Ian - might put your number on here. Name and shame. 0721550---. Yes you Ian. Stop signing off shit.
Feel better after that rant.....