Blog Posts

Engineering Ethics Problem Question

November 17, 2021 by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Leave a Comment

In this article, (and video above), I solve an engineering ethics problem that you may encounter as part of the Ethics and Professional Practice section of the FE Exam.

Question:

An Engineer-In-Training (EIT), is asked to review and stamp a set of civil engineering drawings by his or her supervisor. The EIT is working under a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) and has met the state requirements to obtain licensure. The EIT may seal the contract documents if :

(A) He or She has been given permission by their supervisor who is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE).

(B) He or She has a PhD in the area of Civil Engineering.

(D) He or She is a Licensed Professional Engineer (PE) and is competent in the area of Civil Engineering.

Solution:

PE Environmental vs. PE Civil Water Resources and Environmental

November 10, 2021 by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Leave a Comment

If you are considering a career in environmental engineering, and you want to pursue your professional engineering license, you may be stuck deciding which professional engineering exam to take. You could take the PE Civil Exam with a Water Resources and Environmental depth option or you could take the PE Environmental. The National Council of Examiners and Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) offers both.

So how will you decide? Firstly, consider looking at the specifications of each exam, as below:

What’s the BEST Calculator for the FE Exam?

November 2, 2021 by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Leave a Comment

To prevent unauthorized transcription and distribution of the exam questions, calculators with communicating and text editing capabilities have been banned by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (aka NCEES). You may love the reverse Polish notation of your HP calculator; however, you’ll have to get used to one of the calculators NCEES has approved.

You should start using one of these approved calculators at the beginning of your study preparation, so that you are familiar enough with it by the time of the exam. Please note that the list of approved calculators is reviewed annually. All of the articles we pulled information from for this post are listed at the bottom of this article.

The following calculator models are the only ones acceptable for use during the 2021 exams, as of the publication of this video:

How Can You Work Abroad as An Engineer? Global Engineering License Requirements

October 27, 2021 by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Leave a Comment

In this article, (and video above), I respond to a question from one of our subscribers about whether or not the United States Professional Engineering License can be transferred and used in different countries and vice versa.

Here is the Question:

“Can you do a video on international reciprocity, and how the us PE license compares and contrasts with engineering licenses from other countries. And for those who are not us residents and wish to take the PE exam and still work in their home countries, how would that work?”

Engineering Practice Quiz: Environmental Engineering & Water Resources

October 19, 2021 by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Leave a Comment

In this article (And video above), I solve a problem related to the surface water system hydrologic budget that falls under the environmental engineering & water resources section of the FE exam, similar to what you may encounter during the exam.

Question:

A 7-acre surface area pond is located within a 520-acre watershed. Assume that the infiltration and the seepage are negligible. There is no plant biota around the pond. The watershed received 3.20 in of rainfall for the last 30-day month. The pond elevation at the beginning of the month is 520.5 ft with respect to mean sea level (MSL). By the end of the 30-day month, the pond had risen to 522.2 ft, MSL. Average stream flows into and out the pond during the month are 0.522 cfs and 0.22 cfs respectively. The amount of evaporation (in) of water that take place from the surface of the pond during the month is most nearly:

7.10
16.2
13.6
1.44

Solution:

NCEES PE Exams Are Moving to CBT – This Is When & How It Affects You

October 13, 2021 by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Leave a Comment

This week’s PE exam article (and video above) is in response to many questions we have received from engineers about when their specific FE or PE exam will be going to the computer-based testing (or CBT) format.

What are the Benefits of CBT Exams?

The CBT format offers many benefits, such as enhanced security for exam content and more uniformity in testing conditions. For most exams, it also provides greater scheduling flexibility. All CBT exams are offered at approved Pearson VUE test centers and reasonable accommodations are available for examinees who meet certain eligibility criteria and sufficiently document their request.

Some CBT exams are administered year-round. NCEES constructs these exams using a linear-on-the-fly (also known as LOFT) algorithm. This means that all examinees for a particular exam are required to answer the same number of questions in the same topics; however, no examinees will have the same set of questions. The algorithm will assemble a unique exam within the same specification framework (for example, the same number of questions per topic area) and the same relative level of difficulty.

Other CBT exams that have a smaller examinee population use a different high-stakes testing model and are administered on a single day each year. All examinees taking these exams receive the same questions. The question formats used on both types of exams are the same, independent of the statistical model employed.

Let’s take a look at the CBT Schedule:

Engineering Practice Quiz: Fluid Mechanics and Hydraulics – Fluid Dynamics

October 5, 2021 by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Leave a Comment

In this article (and video above), I solve a fluid dynamics question that would fall under the water resources and hydrology section of the FE exam, similar to what you may encounter during the exam.

Question:

A 500 mm circular pipe carries a flow of 0.28 m3/s of water under a pressure of 0.34 cm, mercury (Hg). If the pipe is laid at an elevation of 9.3 m above a reference datum, then the total head (m) with respect to the reference datum is most nearly:

9.45 m
9.37 m
9.66 m
9.71 m

Solution:

Should I Take the PE or FE Exam?

September 29, 2021 by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Leave a Comment

In this week’s Pass the PE Exam article (and video above), I answer a question I get often from engineering students and recent graduates that ask: “Should I take the PE or FE exam?”

If you are an engineering student and this is something you have been wondering about, then this video is for you. Remember that right now, at this very point in history, you control the direction of your career more than ever. So it’s important to make the right decisions today, and I hope this video will help you do just that!

Let’s Define the Two Different Exams:

The Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam

This exam is designed for recent engineering graduates and students who are close to finishing an undergraduate engineering degree from an EAC (or Engineering Accreditation Commission )/ABET (or Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology)-accredited program. The FE exam is a computer-based exam administered year-round at NCEES-approved Pearson VUE test centers. It includes 110-questions and the exam appointment time is six hours long with about five hours and twenty minutes of that time being actual exam time. If you take and pass the FE exam, you have the choice after roughly four years of progressive experience as an Engineer-in-Training (EIT) to take the Principles and Practice of Engineering exam (PE exam)

The PE Exam or The Principles and Practice of Engineering Exam

This exam is the examination required for one to become a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in the United States, and is the second exam required, coming after the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, created and scored by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES). As a general rule, a professional engineer who has number one an approved four-year engineering degree, number 2 – four years of qualifying engineering experience, and number 3 who successfully completes (3) the eight-hour Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Examination can take the PE exam. That being said, you should confirm these items with your local state education board as some states do vary on these experience and timeline requirements. You can register for the exam through the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) website at NCEES.org.

Here Are Some of the Advantages of Having an EIT Certificate:

FE Exam Review: Surface Water Resources and Hydrology – Runoff Calculations

September 21, 2021 by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Leave a Comment

In this article (and video above), I solve a new surface water resources and hydrology question by calculating the runoff volume, similar to what you may encounter on the FE exam.

Question:

A 53-acre watershed (curve number = 79) receives 122 mm of precipitation. The runoff volume (ac-ft) is most nearly:

4.11
11.62
18.15
4,615

Solution:

Does It Matter Which Civil PE Exam I Take?

September 15, 2021 by Anthony Fasano, P.E. Leave a Comment

In this article (and video above), I answer a question from one of our listeners who asks whether or not he needs to choose a specialty for the Civil PE Exam.

So, Does It Matter Which Civil PE Exam You Take?

Yes! You are indeed required to choose between one of the five depth exams to take. The PE Civil exam is broken up into two sections: the breadth and the depth. The breadth portion is held in the morning and is the same for every examinee, and the depth portion is held in the afternoon and is structured around areas of specialty, one of which each examinee must select.

The five depths are construction, geotechnical, structural, transportation, and water resources and environmental.

If you are struggling to decide which depth to sign up for, consider looking into the pass rates, potential job responsibilities, and average salaries for each of the five depth options to help you with your decision.

Here Are the 5 Depth Exam Options:

1. PE Civil: Construction

For the June 2021 exam, the pass rates for the construction depth exam were 53% for first-time takers and 26% for repeat takers
Duties for professionals in this discipline could include residential and commercial site planning and designing and managing infrastructure
The Average Annual Pay (AAP) for a civil engineer in this discipline is approximately $91,370 US dollars

2. PE Civil: Geotechnical

For the June 2021 exam, the pass rates for the geotechnical depth exam were 66% for first-time takers and 48% for repeat takers
Duties for geotechnical engineers could include monitoring worksite conditions, foundation design, and earthwork
The Average Annual Pay (AAP) for a geotechnical engineer is approximately $94,240 US dollars

3. PE Civil: Structural

For the June 2021 exam exam, the pass rates for the structural depth exam were 56% for first-time takers and 35% for repeat takers
Duties for structural engineers could include designing and managing buildings or bridges.
The Average Annual Pay (AAP) for a structural engineer is approximately $84,770 US Dollars

Please note that the PE Civil: Structural depth exam is NOT the same exam as the SE Exam.

4. PE Civil: Transportation

For the June 2021 exam, the pass rates for the transportation depth exam were 70% for first-time takers and 51% for repeat takers
Duties for transportation engineers could include planning urban transportation, designing roadways, and operating transportation facilities
The Average Annual Pay (AAP) for a transportation engineer is $84,770 US Dollars

5. PE Civil: Water Resources & Environmental

For the June 2021 exam, the pass rates for the water resources and environmental depth exam were 67% for first-time takers and 44% for repeat takers
Duties for an engineer in water resources or the environmental field could include designing and managing human water equipment and implementing air pollution, radiation, and recycling control
The Average Annual Pay (AAP) for an engineer in water resources or environmental is approximately $86,800 US Dollars

Reference: Information for the pass rates and average salaries in this video were taken from NCEES and School of PE, which we will include the links of, below this video.

Another great way to determine which depth you should take is to check out NCEES’ PE Civil exam specifications that we will link to in the comments of this video. The exam specifications outline the topics that will be covered on each depth exam.

Also, check out the video we did called: What’s The Hardest PE Exam? where we talk about the difficulty level of the different PE Exams.

I hope you found this article helpful. In upcoming articles, I will solve some more PE exam practice problems and answer other questions from our subscribers. Pass the PE Exam videos will publish weekly, so be sure to click the subscribe button so you don’t miss something that could make a substantial difference in your exam result.

Lastly, I encourage you to ask questions in the comments of this video, or on this page and I’ll read and respond to them in future videos. So, if there’s a specific topic you want me to cover or answer, we have you covered.

I’ll see you next week… on Pass the PE Exam

Anthony Fasano, P.E.
Engineering Management Institute
Author of Engineer Your Own Success