How Visa Solutions Australia helped a Technology company with a Temporary Skill Shortage visa

K ROV is a specialist technology company based in Brisbane Queensland. Founded by Ingmar Kofler in 2016 they specialise in diver-free, brushless in-water hull cleaning. In addition to hull cleaning, they also provide services such as hull inspections, diver interventions and diver niche cleans. Their system is the only one of its kind in Australia and is renowned for its safety and environmental status.

As a specialist industry, there is a limited number of people worldwide with the experience to work with the hull wiper. While the hull wiper employs overseas technology, the biggest issue Ingmar faces is training people to fly this machine.

Ingmar and his team had little success in finding people locally who possessed the knowledge and capability to undertake this task. K ROV needed a pilot that could not only fly the machine to handle the current workload but also someone with the expertise to train up other pilots for future work.

Given the specialist nature of this machine and its technology, most people in the industry know one another. Ingmar met Chris several years ago in Dubai. Chris is a pilot from the Philippines with a vast amount of specialist experience with the hull wiper. When Ingmar heard that Chris had become available, he jumped on the opportunity to have him work with him.

A migrant himself, Ingmar knew that obtaining visas to have overseas workers come to Australia was complex and involved a fair amount of work. Given the time required to apply for a visa, Ingmar decided to engage the services of experts in the field – Visa Solutions Australia. Dan Engles and the team at Visa Solutions were referred to Ingmar by another company known to Ingmar that had previously employed their services.

Once approached by Ingmar, Visa Solutions' registered migration agent, Vanessa Wibawa set to work in applying for a Temporary Work (Short Stay) visa (subclass 400). The subclass 400 allows the visa holder to stay in Australia for a period of 3 – 6 months to do highly specialised work.

Vanessa is now working on an application to help Chris obtain a Temporary Skills Shortage Visa (subclass 482) which will enable him to stay in Australia for a further two years.

The whole process, from Ingmar contacting Visa Solutions to having Chris arrive in Brisbane took 6 – 8 weeks. A timeframe, Ingmar admits is impressive and would not have been achieved had he tried to undertake the visa application process himself.

Having arrived in Brisbane just before the floods, Chris has proven himself to be an asset to the K ROV team. He is now fully entrenched in the K ROV business, flying the hull wiper as well as training up-and-coming pilots.