Choose Construction or Geotechnical 1

[ketanco]

Hello
This is my first message to this forum and I hope I am not asking an irrelevant question. If so please direct me to any appropriate location please

I will take the Civil PE exam in October in CT

I am studying the morning sessions but for afternoon I am trying to choose between Construction or Geotechnical.

1-No matter which I choose, I will have the same PE stamp right? And I will be equally authorized for stamping drawings correct? For example, if I want to do work in Geotech, or Water resources but during the exam I had chosen Construction, would this be a disadvantage for me while practicing such as not being able to stamp certain things?

2-I mostly worked on Construction Management during my career so if I choose Construction I should be fine. But I like Geotech better. WOuld it be too hard for me if I have no design experience? Is it not possible to make it up by good study? For Construction they give a lot of references in NEECS format, but for Geotech none. so where do we study from if we choose Geotech?

 

[Ron]

If the state of Connecticut licenses engineers without "discipline specific" licensing, then a PE is a PE and you are expected to practice in your area of competence. If the state licenses by discipline, you can only practice within that discipline unless you proved competence and achieve licensing in other disciplines. Call the board.

 

[BigH]

I worry that with "specializations" we will lose the generalist - those that see the big picture and can work in many areas, of course in those areas where the engineer feels he/she is competent to do so. Ron, as is his usual practice, gives good advice!

 

[Phidelt218]

what ever you do in the afternoon does not matter. But remember that you will have specialized questions in each half. I did transportation and there were a bunch of questions out of the "Green book" (design book for roads by AASHTO. Construction is known as the "general" afternoon. Geotechnical has a lot of retaining wall questions, rigid and flexible retaining walls. If you have never designed a flexible retaining wall then i recommend avoiding the geotechnical. By buddy just took the geotechnical a year ago and those caught him off guard.

 

[Twinkie]

If you have a lot of experience with construction, you may be OK with that section. From what I hear, it is very difficult for those without hands-on construction experience...how much do you know about crane rigging?

Here is a website with a lot of free information and study resources for the construction module:

http://www.learncivilengineering.com

Best of luck.

 

[ketanco]

ok and in the PM section do they give redundant data that we will not need to use? or everything they give we must use?

 

[Phidelt218]

ketanco

The entire test will have problems where you have to decide what information you will need to solve the problem. Some will give you every little piece of information possible and you may only need a couple of the values. Or they may give you little information and you have to dig into code to get the values to use (like in strutural calling out a material and grade and size, or transportation calling out a certain size road in an area).

 

[Kuhuh]

ketano,
I too am taking the PE in Oct. While I can't give you any personal advice about taking the test, I can offer you some advice I received from fellow Civil PE's/ E.I.T's who have taken it once or twice. They told me to just pick hydraulics because they failed the construction session. They said the hydraulics is more plug and chug and they didn't know all the OSHA stuff and charts in the construction section. They are field engineers for a design firm. They don't estimate project because most firms now a days just have contractors do the engineers estimate. I noticed ,like the morning sections, you have to use experience to bring in other factors that are not given in the problem statement to find the correct answer. I.e. estimating the cost of forms or cycle times of equipment. However, many engineers don't get field time anymore or do estimates, so I would think this section would be very difficult for those engineers.

 

[SeanTopper]

Hi everyone, my 2 cents:
I assume that you are not taking a refresher course since you are asking about reference books. I encourage you to find out if there is still one you could attend or at least borrow course materials from someone who did. I don't know the details of your study strategy either, but I believe that decision (afternoon depth) should have been made months ago, and stuck to it in terms of preparation. That being said, geotech is very straightforward in terms of studying, since obscure references may not show up on the exam and many geotech questions came out in the morning this April, like retaining walls and soil classification. If water resources is not your field, stay away. Years ago the environmental component was not as heavy as it is today and there is where people usually fails. Construction is as difficult as any of the other depths, I don't agree with labeling as the general of the afternoon. Transportation is doable IF you have done at least a bit of roadway design and at least know how to navigate on the references (MUTCD, HCM, AASHTO). My background is Civil/structures and I'm very glad I pick geotech passing on the 1st attempt. Bonus for geotech: the least amount of books you need to bring to the test. Sorry for the long post and Good luck!

 

[DDBPE]

Same experience as SeanTopper; my background was heavy highway construction and when I took the test 10+ years ago, I took a refresher course at the college, luckily I was near one. I thought I was going to take transportation in the afternoon, but found out during the refresher that I did not have all the suggested books. I lacked only one suggested book for geotechnical and realized I should take the geotechnical afternoon session due to only having one book to buy and the refresher made me realize I had retained a lot more from college than I thought. Another thing I learned, the two pages of seismic I had in one book was not enough. There were 6 questions on seismic I had to guess at due to not having any good books on the subject.
I also learned to organize everything, all of my books were tabbed with subjects on one side and a cross reference to other books along the top. You have to be able to look up information quickly and know the books well. Also, watch your time, I had a printed sheet with the time I should be at each question, to help guide me, that way I did not spend too much time on a question and I could go back to it later.
Good Luck!