MD Civil PE: Getting experience verified from old employer after everyone quit

I'm in the process of applying for the October 2016 PE exam in Maryland.  I'm on my third job now and hitting 4 years experience this month.  My second job, which accounts for 1.5 years of pure design experience, was at a particular office of a medium sized firm that has a pretty high turnaround on employees within my discipline.  The firm will remain nameless, but needless to say there was one particular person responsible for people coming and going so quickly, and that person was my supervisor.  The group was small, and everyone i worked with has since quit.  My old supervisor recently quit now too.  So there's really nobody there who has any idea what i did from a design standpoint.  The only person who i believe may still be there is the office manager, but he only has a very general idea of my work or rather my projects as a whole.  So my question is how do i get this experience verified?  I know which firm my old supervisor went to, but he's a notoriously difficult person.  I fear he may refuse to sign off on anything given the fact that he's no longer employed at the firm in which i gained the experience.  Is he required by law to verify my work experience?  Does MD care if he no longer works at the firm?  I really hope I'm not stuck waiting another year and a half!

rfehr613 said:

I'm in the process of applying for the October 2016 PE exam in Maryland. 

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Keep your fitbit at home.

matt267 PE said:

22 minutes ago, rfehr613 said: I'm in the process of applying for the October 2016 PE exam in Maryland. 

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Keep your fitbit at home.

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Got that. I hear someone in our marine group was one of the unlucky ones who failed because of that. I don't even own a fitbit, and I'm too anal to not check my pockets 362 times before a test like this ?

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Can't hurt to try.   I had to track down an old supervisor from a company that no longer existed.   He filled out the form.  

P-E said:

Can't hurt to try.   I had to track down an old supervisor from a company that no longer existed.   He filled out the form.  

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I will try. I'm just trying to prepare for the worst lol

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I had a woman I worked under and made look good for 2 years tell me that she doesn't even remember those projects nor working with me on them. No one is under any obligation to verify your experience and give you a reference. They also don't have to still be working there. Give it a try and see how it goes. You can also get another co-worker you worked under. I understand in smaller firms, that could be the same as the supervisor. In others, you could have been a junior engineer under one or more senior engineers while you have a different supervisor.

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jijir83 said:

I had a woman I worked under and made look good for 2 years tell me that she doesn't even remember those projects nor working with me on them. No one is under any obligation to verify your experience and give you a reference. They also don't have to still be working there. Give it a try and see how it goes. You can also get another co-worker you worked under. I understand in smaller firms, that could be the same as the supervisor. In others, you could have been a junior engineer under one or more senior engineers while you have a different supervisor. Sent from my SURTAB-722-3G-HD-1S using Tapatalk

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Ugh. That's not good news.

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The old office manager told me that i have to try to get my old supervisor to sign off. He gave me his cell. I hope this isn't a nightmare to do! ?

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rfehr613 said:

The old office manager told me that i have to try to get my old supervisor to sign off. He gave me his cell. I hope this isn't a nightmare to do! ?Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

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Good luck!

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Came on here to ask another question and saw this old thread. Figured I'd follow-up.

It took a long time, but i got ahold of my old supervisor. I caught him on the other line, so i think he didn't realize it was me when he switched over. Anyway, he said he would sign the experience form, so i overnighted it to him. Ten days later, and only 2 days before the deadline, i called to check the status. He seemed agitated as usual and said the forms are sitting on his desk at home. He didn't touch them. I asked him to send them out when he got back. He said he would, but I'm sure that was a lie. I ended up just sending the board some samples of design work I've done. I'm sitting for the exam in two weeks.

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rfehr613 said:

I ended up just sending the board some samples of design work I've done. I'm sitting for the exam in two weeks.

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I'm glad to read that it eventually worked out for you. Good luck next week!

p.s. Leave your fitbit at home.

rfehr613 said:

Came on here to ask another question and saw this old thread. Figured I'd follow-up.

It took a long time, but i got ahold of my old supervisor. I caught him on the other line, so i think he didn't realize it was me when he switched over. Anyway, he said he would sign the experience form, so i overnighted it to him. Ten days later, and only 2 days before the deadline, i called to check the status. He seemed agitated as usual and said the forms are sitting on his desk at home. He didn't touch them. I asked him to send them out when he got back. He said he would, but I'm sure that was a lie. I ended up just sending the board some samples of design work I've done. I'm sitting for the exam in two weeks.

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I'm confused.  Instead of references, you sent in examples of your work?  I've never heard of this. 

ptatohed said:

On ‎10‎/‎14‎/‎2016 at 8:11 PM, rfehr613 said: Came on here to ask another question and saw this old thread. Figured I'd follow-up. It took a long time, but i got ahold of my old supervisor. I caught him on the other line, so i think he didn't realize it was me when he switched over. Anyway, he said he would sign the experience form, so i overnighted it to him. Ten days later, and only 2 days before the deadline, i called to check the status. He seemed agitated as usual and said the forms are sitting on his desk at home. He didn't touch them. I asked him to send them out when he got back. He said he would, but I'm sure that was a lie. I ended up just sending the board some samples of design work I've done. I'm sitting for the exam in two weeks.

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I'm confused.  Instead of references, you sent in examples of your work?  I've never heard of this. 

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Yup. It's an option... in Maryland at least. Obviously not the first option one should choose, but an option for sure. I don't know if it only applies to people like me who can't get their references to sign off or if anyone can do it right off the bat. Probably the former. It's written right on the application. I'm glad i had a work around for my asshole ex-boss!

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To clarify though, this was only for one of my references. My first job and current job went through the traditional reference method. It was only my second job that required work examples.

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