How many weeks on average the Texas PE Board takes to evaluate applications for its 3 years temporary TX PE license from qualified NAFTA engineers?

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hawaii

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Texas Board of Professional Engineers (TBPE) awards 3 years temporary PE license to qualified NAFTA (Canada & Mexico) and South Korean engineers (minimum 7 or 8 years of experience is required after getting professional engineer license in respective countries) and the engineers must pass 8 hr PE exam to practice in TX after 3 years.

I mailed my application to TBPE on 12th or 13th June 2017 by priority mail and TBPE entered my application into their system on June 21 sending me an auto-generated email saying that they will first make an administrative review (by admin staff) that will determine whether I submitted all the required papers and documents and then a technical review (by a technical person i.e., a PE) on my application package.

TBPE started admin review on July 19 telling me mainly that they need my transcripts and a few other papers and finished their administrative review on August 3 meaning they received all the required papers to start evaluation of my application. TBPE finished "technical review" at the soonest and informed me on August 4 that my application will be circulated to "Engineer Board members for the evaluation of your credentials" without giving me any date when it will be circulated to engineer board members.

I contacted TBPE 4 times till today to know when (approximate time line) TBPE will be able to finish their evaluation of my credentials and 3 times TBPE said basically 'they don't know' and once TBPE said 'couple of months' without saying how many months or weeks.

My question for the forum is, according to your experience, on average how many weeks does TBPE i.e., TBPE's engineer board members take to complete evaluation of an application for a PE license?

Can anybody answer this question? I appreciate your response.

 
I had two friends who moved from a US state to Texas and it took them both nearly 5 months to get their licenses via reciprocity. I would expect longer from out of the Country..

 
I just asked one of my colleagues who moved from Maryland or Virginia to TX and she got her PE license in TX (through comity) in about 10 to 12 weeks. It seems that 5 months is a long time compared to 10-12 weeks (almost double).

Is there any NAFTA (Canada & Mexico) engineer in this forum who applied for 3 years temporary PE license in TX initially and if the answer is yes, how many weeks did the Texas Board of Professional Engineers take to award the 3 years temporary PE license?

 
Ask her if she already had her NCEES Record. My friends who moved there didn't have the NCEES record, which Texas requires before granting licensure and that's what ads the time on.  Have they mentioned that to you or have you already gone through that step?

no clue on the out of country stuff...

 
She did not go through NCEES. All her  referees had to send their reference letters to TBPE again for her TX PE comity application from Virginia or Maryland. She told me that she could have got her TBPE comity license in less than 2 months if one of her referees would have sent her reference letter quickly to TBPE rather than delaying it.

I am now working in TX and so, in a sense, I am not out of TX but my application for 3 yrs temporary TX PE license will probably fall under a different category than regular US PE comity applicants. 

Can anybody jump in and solve the mystery?

 
There are many factors that could affect the time line including familiarty with your country, quality/completeness of your documentation and number of PE appliant for regular license. Since PE applicants have strict timelines for documents being submitted and registering for the PE exam, the board may rank those higher priority.

If board members are not familiar with your country engineering requirements they may be doing research to make sure the requirements for your license is similar to what TX expects from their engineers. 

They could also be trying to verify information that is in your submitted documents.  For the 1st step, administration staff most likely just looks to see if you submitted the documents and not trying to verify any of it or determine if the information on your documentation is adequate. 

All of these items can lead to 1 application being approved in 10-12 weeks while another is 5 months or more. 

 
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